*^™*'*'*'tltetI!hiijfersUB of dbicaflo 

rOUNDBD BV JOHN D. HOCKBFELLUK 



UGGESTION IN EDUCATION 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTIES OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF ARTS, 

LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE, IN CANDIDACY FOR THE 

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(department of pedagogy) 



BY 



WILLIAM ARTHUR CLARK, A.M. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Chicago) 



CHICAGO 

1900 



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ttbe IflniversftB of Cbfcago 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTIES OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF ARTS, 

LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE, IN CANDIDACY FOR THE 

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(department of pedagogy) 



BY 

WILLIAM ARTHUR CLARK, A.M. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Chicago) 



CHICAGO 

1900 



.04 



" To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching." 

— AmieVs Journal. 



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VXrv»X.v7- 



PRINTED A T THE UNIVERSITY OF CHIC A GO PRESS 



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PREFATORY NOTE. 

The publication of this thesis has been delayed in the hope that 
opportunity would be found for a fuller statement of the application 
of the fundamental principle of guidance through suggestion to prac- 
tical school work ; but no time has been found for such revision, and 
the dissertation is now given to the printer in the form in which it was 
originally accepted by the Faculties. 

W. A. Clark. 
Nebraska State Normal School, 
January, 1903. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. 

I. Problem Stated. page 

1. Nature and method of the discussion 9 

a) Constructive and expository, rather than research. 

d) Formulation and discussion of a single law of pedagogy. 

c) A view of the whole field from a definite standpoint. 

2. Pedagogy and its laws - -10 

a) The science of education. 

d) What a science is. 

c) Education as the subject-matter of pedagogy. 

d) Accumulation of material for a science of education. 

e) Pedagogy a normative science. 

II. Mental Growth. 

1. Nature of growth in general - - - - - - - -12 

a) Definition of growth. 

d) "Enlargement" and "organization" as factors in growth. 

c) All growth through functioning of the organism. 

2. How mind grows ---------- 13 

a) Analogy to the growth of the plant. 

d) Increase in " mental volume " and reorganization of "mental struc- 

ture." 

c) Source of the materials. 

d) Rubbed into conscious life by the friction of the environment. 

e) Saturation of the life by the content of common consciousness. 
/) Making the race knowledge individual knowledge. 

III. Guiding the Mental Life of Another. 

1. A common assumption in all education - - - - - - IS 

a) Each person builds his own life out of the available materials and 

under the limitations of his environment. 
d) But one person may intentionally influence the life of another, 
determining in a large measure its general trend and character, 
without destroying its autonomy. 

2. Means of guidance -- 15 

a) By ordering the materials. 

6) By determining the functioning in expression. 

IV. Nature of Suggestion and Reaction. 

I. Two uses of the word " suggest " 16 

a) One idea suggests another. 

(i) Use in the "association of psychology." 
(2) Continuity of the life current. 

S 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

FACE 

(3) Professor James's criticism. 
b) One person suggests an idea to another, 
(i) The introduction of an "image." 

(2) Nature of "reaction." 

(3) Suggestion and reaction not successive stages. 

2. The two schools of hypnotic theory 18 

a) The " neurosis theory." 

b) The " suggestion theory." 

c) Views of Bernheim, Wundt, Titchener, and James. 

3. Two important facts in the suggestion theory of hypnotism - - - 19 

a) The consciousness of the hypnotized person. 

b) Self-determination in hypnotic action. 

4. Suggestion in normal life .-.---..-20 

a) Inoculating with an idea. 

b) Compared with hypnotic suggestion. 

c) Illustration : nature of a " conversation." 

5. "//w2Vai?2o«" is through suggestion ....---21 
a) Vagueness of the term. 

3) Aristotle's use of it. 

c) Baldwin, Harris, and Preyer. 

d) Guyau's view of the process. 

e) "Imitation" vs. "originality." 

V. Suggestion in Educative Guidance. 

1. Nature of education .-----•- -24 

a) Formal definition. 

3) Explication of the definition. 

(1) Demands two parties: teacher and pupil. 

(2) Limited to " formal education." 

(3) Psychological and sociological conceptions. 

(4) Product and process conceptions. 

(5) From the standpoint of the teacher or from that of the pupil. 

(6) Critical summary. 

2. Teaching - -28 

a) Definition. 

b) No teaching without learning. 

c) Nature of " instruction." 
d^ Nature of " discipline." 

3. Affirmative character of all education ------- 30 

a) Encouraging and aiding growth. 

3) Leading to life through life. 

4. The law of educative guidance 3^ 

a) No education apart from suggestion. 

b) The teacher guides from within. 

c) Pedagogical suggestion a normal life process. 

d) Humanity essentially good. 

e) Examples of particular teaching acts. 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 



PAGE 



5. Unintentional influencing - --..... -i^ 

a) Huntington's " unconscious tuition." 

b) Educative guidance essentially intentional. 

c) Employing life consciously to guide life. 

6. Study ---- 26 

a) What study is. 

V) Teaching is inciting to study. 

7. The "recitation" 37 

a) Function of the recitation. ^ 

b) Importance in school work. 

8. The " school " 38 

a) What a school is. 

b) The teacher's place in the school. 

c) The " curriculum." 

9. Punishment -------- ..-.3^ 

a) Definition and explication. 

b) The three ends of punishment. 

c) Character of school punishment. 

d) Examples of educative punishment. 

e) Punishment for neglect to do the right, 
/) Punishment to be avoided. 

g) Example in the Elmira Reformatory. 

VI. Negative Implications of the Law. 

1. No education apart from suggestion - 46 

a) Life cannot be controlled from without. 

b) Teacher can only modify life. 

2. No guidance without reaction ----....47 

a) Only active things can be guided. 

b) No " suggestion " without reaction. 

VII. Pedagogical Conclusions. 

1. Education is an affirmative process ------- 49 

a) Its aim is affirmative. 

3) Its means are affirmative. 

c) Its methods are affirmative. 

2. Education is a personal matter ---50 

a) Attitude of the teacher toward his pupil. 

b) Pedagogy an ethical science. 

c) Individual character of teaching. 

d) The teacher a fellow student. 

3. Education seeks to form character ---....52 

a) There is one unified aim. 

b) The aim is an ideal one. 

c) Education aims at present character. 

Bibliography -- 54 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION, 



THE PROBLEM STATED. 

The following study deals with a perfectly definite problem. It is 
the purpose to state explicitly a single law of" pedagogy, to discuss its 
validity as a scientific proposition, and to show its significance in the 
whole of educational theory. It is a work of formulating and 
expounding rather than of establishing through scientific research. 
The facts employed as data in the discussion are, in the main, common 
property — an inheritance from centuries of thought upon educational 
aims and practices. While no attempt has been made to verify them by 
extended observation and experiment, the writer feels that his experi- 
ence of more than a score of years in the class-room gives some war- 
rant for their acceptance. Until experimental psychology advances 
beyond its present stage of a too exclusive investigation of sense-phe- 
nomena and deals with the facts of rational life in general, and until 
the future pedagogical laboratory makes possible a like critical study 
of educational phenomena, we must content ourselves to deal tenta- 
tively with the facts found in common consciousness in such a manner 
as seems most productive for the ends sought. Such a study as is 
here presented, will not, however, prove unproductive for the purposes 
of practical pedagogy, and it is certainly not without its more strictly 
scientific value. It presents and explains a clearly defined working 
hypothesis for guidance in subsequent research, thus pre-empting a 
field for future exploration. To gather and evaluate by true scientific 
method the data necessary to establish or confute this law would be a 
decisive step toward giving pedagogy a right to a place among the 
modern sciences. But such a consecrated work demands an equip- 
ment of resources and an opportunity for study which the writer 
cannot at present command; consequently he contents himself with 
merely delimiting the field. 

While dealing with but a single law of the science of education, 
there is a degree of completeness in the discussion, in that it views 
the whole field of educational thought from a definite standpoint. 
It is, in fact, a study of educational aims, means, and processes in 
their relation to one dominating principle. All the materials of edu- 

9 



I o SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

cational science are thus organized about a central conception, and 
all educational theory is developed from one germinant idea. There 
are evidently other laws of co-ordinate rank which could be made the 
centers of similar studies, but with these we are not at present con- 
cerned. The cosmic process of formulating such laws and organizing 
them into a consistent whole is truly the first stage of differentiating 
and defining the science of education. But while we may not at present 
undertake the organization of such a framework for our science, we 
must preface our discussion of the chosen law by a general characteri- 
zation of the nature of pedagogy, its subject-matter and its methods. 

Pedagogy is the science of education. — The common denial that 
there is a science of education, either in esse or in posse, is due chiefly 
to three facts : a vagueness of conception regarding what constitutes a 
science, a lack of precise definition of education, and ignorance of 
what has already been accomplished in the formulation of funda- 
mental educational principles. Our present purpose will not permit 
the examination in detail of these three sources of error ; but the 
lines along which such a vindication of the claims of pedagogy should 
proceed may be indicated here. 

A science is an organically related body of thought originating in a 
specialization of interests. In the earlier stages of life, both of the race 
and of the individual, experiences come and go in their complexity 
without being evaluated from definite view-points, each experience 
being for the time the whole of life viewed in its unbroken entirety. 
Later certain experiences are objectified, correlated, and unified into a 
class, viewed as having a common origin in a particular mode of contact 
with the environment ; and thus centers of special interest are estab- 
lished, and particular points of view become habitual. Through 
analysis and classification experiences are broken up and the elements 
segregated into groups, and by constructive thinking these groups are 
organized into phases of life. These phases of life through elabora- 
tion and systematization of their characteristic features become 
sciences. Thus any mode or "way of looking at things" may become 
a science, if the facts are so differentiated and organized as to consti- 
tute a distinct phase of experience. Sciences are styles of thought, 
fashions in experiencing that are born, run their courses, and die, 
giving place to new sciences. The facts in common consciousness are 
seen in endless variety of kaleidoscopic combinations as age succeeds 
age, and the sciences of one generation become old-fashioned and 
"false" to the succeeding generations. Nevertheless each science has 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 1 1 

during its reign its own field, within which it is exclusive and beyond 
which it cannot be extended. The mutability of the organic form of 
a science does not necessarily render its knowledge-basis vague or its 
boundaries indefinite. It is essentially one way of looking at the 
facts, and such singleness of conception will not admit of uncertainty 
as to subject-matter. Many of the facts and principles of one science 
may by slight conversion be turned to useful account in building up 
another science. It is merely a question of reconstructing the 
elementary materials about a new center of interest; the view-point is 
changed, and the truths are seen in new relations and altered per- 
spective. One science in this way may become a propaedeutic to 
another, contributing its facts as data for new generalizations. Its 
principles are transplanted into the new field and subordinated to a 
new cosmical view. It is in this way that the facts of psychology and 
ethics become facts of pedagogy. Education, properly defined, pre- 
sents a characteristic body of phenomena, which are the subject- 
matter of a true science. 

Education is the conscious direction which the more mature person 
gives to the growth of the less mature, that he may lead him into a 
larger enjoyment of the blessings of the physical environment, and a 
fuller participation in the pleasures and duties of the social life. The 
fundamental idea here is the conscious guidance of a life-process. It is 
the bringing up of the young to such a stage of life-functioning as 
enables them to participate in the blessings and responsibilities of life, 
through a constructi\^e guidance of their development. Both the 
social and the individual aspects of education are recognized ; it is 
the process of socializing the individual through maturing him. The 
individual is to be "eleVated into the race" through integrating into 
his life experiences originating in the social environment. This restric- 
tion of the term to what is commonly called "formal education," as 
opposed to the vague conception of the whole process of development 
of the individual during the_ period of youth under whatever influ- 
ences, is essential to any clear discussion of pedagogical principles 
and laws. There is no education apart from, teaching, that is, apart from 
"conscious guidance" of life toward a more or less clearly deter- 
mined end. \^ 

It is neither possible nor desirable to exhibit here what has already 
been accomplished by educators in accumulating materials for their 
science. One who reads with discrimination our rapidly increasing 
pedagogical literature cannot fail to find much of a truly scientific 



12 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION' 

character. To segregate these discovered principles and to give them 
organic form as the laws of a science is a work of the highest value, 
which awaits the masterhand of some educational leader. 

As to matter and method sciences may be separated into two 
groups: descriptive and normative. The descriptive sciences are 
explanatory, dealing with that which is, without concern for what 
ought to be. They are the "fact sciences" of the physical and psychi- 
cal worlds, in which man simply sees and interprets the objects about 
him unmoved by a desire to modify them with reference to subjective 
relations. The normative sciences, on the other hand, are concerned 
with subjective attitudes springing out of a sense of moral obligation. 
They deal with what ought to be and are fundamentally concerned with 
questions of duty. They are the " law sciences " of the social world. 
The descriptive sciences are analytic and explanatory in their methods, 
while the normative are constructive and directive ; the former deal 
with facts, and the latter with norms. Psychology is a descriptive 
science; pedagogy, a normative science. The laws of pedagogy are 
formal enunciations of principles of conduct of one moral personality 
toward another in aiding him to his highest development. They 
should not be confounded, on the one hand, with the mere laws of 
mental development which belong to psychology, nor, on the other, 
with the general laws of conduct in social life which belong to ethics. 
Their characteristic element is the recognition of the ethical attitude 
of the teacher toward his pupil. 

MENTAL GROWTH. 

Growth is the process by which a living organism builds its own 
structure through the functioning of its organs. It involves both the 
acquisition of material and the organization of structure. While growth, 
at least in the earlier stages of the life of the organism, includes enlarge- 
ment, mere enlargement without a simultaneous organic development is 
not growth. The rolling snowball increases in volume, but it does not 
"grow;" nor can the forming crystal be said to grow in the biological 
sense in which we are here using the word. The living tree grows by 
appropriating material from its environment and assimilating it into its 
own organized substance, employing in the process its organs — roots, 
leaves, etc. — in their normal functioning. In the lowest forms of ani- 
mal and plant life the vital movement is merely a simplification of this 
process, and in the most perfect form of the human organism the 
growth is still through the normal action of the living mechanism ; 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 1 3 

hence it may be broadly stated that all growth, in the biological sense, 
is through the functioning of the organism. 

The growth of the human mind is analogous to the growth of the 
tree, making due allowance for the non-spatial character of the mind. 
It is not necessary to raise here the question of the existence of a sub- 
stantial mental entity, hypostatized as a substratum for the mental phe- 
nomena; it is enough to know that man's mental life is a self-directed 
growth. The individual human personality develops naturally to 
perfection of structure and functioning through self-directed experien- 
cing. This does not mean that the mind grows apart from the body in 
which it manifests itself; it is the man that grows, body and soul in 
their vital union. We are, however, concerned at present with the 
mental aspect of the man in his life-movement, /. e., with the growth 
of the mind. This growth, like that of the vegetable organism, is not 
a mere enlargement through accretion and molding by environment ; 
it is a vital process, consciously directed by the man himself. What- 
ever life the man has — all that he lives is thus a matter of self-directed 
development. Each day's life is built upon that which is past, and is 
in turn the foundation and the condition of that which is to come. 
Nothing belongs to the life except that which it grows into itself, and 
all that it does grow into itself is permanently a part of it. 

In this mental growth it is important to distinguish with precision 
the two phases, of increase in "mental volume" and reorganization of 
"mental structure." They are not two successive stages, but two 
aspects of the same process ; the acquisition of material and the con- 
structive employment of it are but the life movement seen from differ- 
ent standpoints. When we speak of "increase in mental volume," we 
need to guard ourselves against the implication of the space concep- 
tion involved in the term "volume," which we borrow from the 
physicists. A "larger life" does not, of course, mean one of greater 
magnitude, but merely one of greater experience content. To 
"increase the mental volume" is to add to the knowledge-posses- 
sions, to swell the current of the life-movement by wider and fuller 
experiences. Similarly by the "organization of mental structure" is 
not meant the distribution of the "mental substance" into particular 
organs, or " faculties," but the securing of such integrity of the mental 
life as will give effectiveness and facility to functioning. Clearly 
determined expression is both the means and the result of this organ- 
ization of life. It is only the effort to produce that can give the 
ability to produce ; and one learns to live artistically by living artisti- 



1 4 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

cally. In the effort to know one lives more; in the effort to do he 
lives better. But these cannot be separated ; one knows truly only in 
doing, and does only in knowing. 

The materials for man's growth are found in his physical and social 
environment. All growth is by incorporating into the structure of the 
organism materials taken from the environment. Plants feed upon that 
which they find in the soil and air ; and man nourishes his life from 
his environment. Man has two environments, or rather his environ- 
ment is double in its character. From the physical universe about him he 
appropriates the materials of his bodily structure ; and this same physi- 
cal universe impinging upon his nervous mechanism stimulates him into 
conscious life-activities — "rubs him into conscious life." But his 
experiencing of the environment, his interpretation of its irritating 
contact, is mediated by his social environment. He sees the " green- 
ness" of the grass through the eyes of his race-fellows. His life is 
saturated with the content of common consciousness, the accumulated 
race-experiences, so that he cannot reach the physical world except 
through the medium of the social atmosphere in which he lives. In 
addition to mediating the physical environment for man, this social 
atmosphere is itself a true environment. Man acknowledges his 
fellows as subjects wirh whom he agrees or disagrees, to whom he 
takes attitudes. His relations to them nourish and condition his indi- 
vidual life. Just as in his experiences with his physical environment 
he builds up certain concepts, or " types " of existence, that are to him 
in their recurrence in thought a sort of sense-impression stimulating 
to life, so in the recognized "characters" of his fellows and in the 
social institutions as they exist in common consciousness, he finds 
stimulation and materials for his own development. Thus in his 
experiences with nature and in his intercourse with his fellow men the 
individual man finds the materials of his normal growth. We desig- 
nate as "environment" the general storehouse of life's supplies ; but 
environment \& only so much of "circumstances" as is related actively 
to the life of the individual ; it is circumstances as they are grasped 
by the individual and made a part of his own structure. What we call 
"knowledge," the accumulated race-experiences that we embody in 
books, becomes material for the growth of the individual only as he 
appropriates it. He must psychologize it into his very soul-substance 
through true apperception. The "arithmetic" of the school text-book 
becomes John^s arithmetic by being incorporated into John's life in 
normal growth. 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 1 5 

GUIDING THE MENTAL LIFE OF ANOTHER. 

That one person may intentionally guide and stimulate the growth 
of another is a fundamental postulate in all educational science. It is 
a common assumption in all teaching, and is not likely to be called in 
question by the practical teacher or the more philosophical expounder 
of pedagogical principles. It is, however, important to know its rela- 
tions to the principle set forth in the preceding section, namely, that 
each person's life is a self-directed growth. It is an essential condition 
of rational life that it builds itself out of the available materials and 
under the limitations of its environment. To take from a person, even 
for the most benevolent motives, this right of self-making would, were 
it possible to do so, be destructive of all moral responsibility, would 
degrade the person into the thing. Fortunately it is psychologically 
impossible to rob man wholly of this power, though the supply of life- 
materials may be so limited and the opportunities for constructive 
expression may be so controlled as to make the life a poor, dwarfed, 
sickly shadow of what it would be under normal conditions. On the 
other hand, it is possible to so enrich the environment and to so 
accelerate the movement as to make the life of another much more 
than it would be unguided. Upon this possibility of aiding the life- 
movement of another depends the whole theory of education. The 
teacher claims the power and the right to co-operate in determining 
the development of his pupil toward some ideal end, which he as a 
more mature student of life's purposes and processes more or less 
clearly perceives ; and pedagogy has for its province the principles and 
laws of this intentional influencing of one person by another. 

The teacher has chiefly two means of influencing the life-movement 
of his pupil : he may so order the environment as to secure a larger 
appropriation of such materials as contribute to development in a cer- 
tain direction ; or he may suggest images about which the successive 
experiences may be developed, thus shaping by gentlest touch the 
progressive building. These two are not so easily distinguished as 
might appear at the first glance ; they are really fundamentally the 
same, differing only as to whether our attention is directed to the 
material used or the use that is made of it. We may for the present 
drop from view the first aspect, returning to it in a later part of the 
discussion. The nature of the second means is comprehensively 
presented in the following statement : Images may be suggested about 
which the life-experiences may be organized, and even the larger ideals 
of the whole life-movement may be biased by the intentional influence of 



1 6 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

the more mature mind. We must now devote ourselves to a somewhat 
exhaustive study of this proposition, seeking to determine first its 
psychological validity and then its pedagogical significance. 

NATURE OF SUGGESTION AND REACTION. 

The word "suggest" has, in both philosophy and in common 
speech, two pretty clearly distinguished meanings : one idea may sug- 
gest another, and one person may suggest an idea to another person. 
The first is the common use in the "association psychology; " it denotes 
the operation by which one idea calls up another through some form 
of association with it. Doubtless there is much justification for the 
claim that "all mental life falls under the principle of suggestion," 
and that " the existence of an idea in consciousness at a particular 
time is due to the fact that such another idea has preceded it in con- 
sciousness;" but we need not on this account look upon life as a mere 
chain of linked ideas. It is the whole life-current that moves on ; or, 
as Ladd states it in his Descriptive atid Explanatory Psychology, p. 264, 
" It is our total states or fields of consciousness which follow each 
other in the succession of time." It is enough for our present pur- 
poses to recognize that there is a continuity of experience without 
attempting to trace the connections between its successive phases. We 
must leave to the psychologist the formulation and defense of his 
"laws of association," with the humble petition that we may be spared 
from any attempt to deal in pedagogy with discrete "psychic atoms" 
joined by some form of hypothetical linkages " in the mind " or " in the 
brain." We cannot forbear, however, to quote Professor James 
against his brethren : "Asociation, so far as the word stands for an 
effect, is between things thought of — it is things, not ideas, which are 
associated in the mind. We ought to talk of the association of objects, 
not of the association of ideas. And so far as association stands for a 
cause, it is \i&\?^tfx\ processes in the brain — it is these which, by being 
associated in certain ways, determine what successive objects shall be 
thought."' 

To suggest, in the second meaning of the term, is to impart 
an idea unobtrusively to another. It is to excite an idea in the 
mind of another, to start an experience by indirect prompting, to 
introduce an image into the mind in such a manner as to cause a 
reconstruction of the life-materials about it as a determining center. 
Baldwin characterizes it as "the abrupt entrance from without into 

^ Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 554. 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 1 7 

consciousness of an idea or image which becomes a part of the stream 
of thought and tends to produce the muscular and volitional effects 
which ordinarily follow upon its presence."' The word "abrupt " in 
this statement is liable to be misunderstood. The idea does not, 
even in the hypnotic state, break into the mind ; there is always a wel- 
coming, however coy and resisting the receiving mind may be. It is 
a life-movement that is influenced, and it cannot passively suffer the 
introduction into it of something wholly foreign to it. " Suggestion 
is an operation producing a given effect on a subject by acting on his 
intelligence. Every suggestion essentially consists in acting on a per- 
son by means of an idea ; every effect suggested is the result of a phe- 
nomenon of ideation."* This "ideation" is the essential fact of the 
suggestion as seen from the side of the influenced life. It is the reac- 
tion of the receiving mind. When we speak of the " reaction to a 
suggestion " we do not, however, mean adverse action, as we do in 
physics, but the active reception of the suggestion as a factor in the 
life-movement. To react in this sense is to accept and to utilize con- 
structively in a normal process of experiencing that which is placed 
before the mind. In his Outlines of Psyckoiogy 'PioiessoT Titchener, 
speaking of the experimental process of applying sensory stimuli to 
another person and noting his response to them, says : "A reaction is 
an artificial action." The term " artificial " used here must be care- 
fully guarded. The action is a perfectly natural one so far as its pro- 
cedure is concerned ; it is only artificial in that it originates in the 
conscious purpose of another, that is another furnishes the stimulus to 
an experience that otherwise would not have come naturally into the 
life-current. The suggestion comes as a hint or insinuation to a self- 
determining movement, which may accept it or reject it with more or 
less vigor according to the integrity of the whole movement. This is 
as true for the hypnotic subject as it is for the person in the normal 
state. Further, " suggestion " and " reaction " are not successive 
stages in the progress of the influencing of one life by another ; they 
are two aspects of the same movement. There can be no suggestion 
without reaction. The two minds participate in a common process, the 
one as suggester and the other as reacter. The one mind communi- 
cates to the other from its own life-movement, and the other actively 
receives the communication into its own vital current. It is merely 
the impinging of one life upon another, gently yet effectively modify- 
ing its course. For the purposes of the present discussion emphasis 

'^Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 297. 2 Binet and Fere, Animal Magnetism, p. 173. 



1 8 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

must be laid upon the unobtrusiveness of this influencing. The idea 
is not thrust before the mind as something wholly foreign to it, inter- 
rupting forcibly its current of experiencing with the demand for the 
taking up of a new element. The " communicated image " finds its 
place in the life because of a feeling of kinship of the present content 
for the factor. The new idea is created in the mind of the receiver 
under the most gentle touch of the influencing mind, and the experi- 
ence is determined in volume and form by the "mere suggestion" of 
what it may become. 

There are two clearly distinguished schools of hypnotic theory, 
commonly known as the " Paris School " and the " Nancy School." 
According to the first, hypnotism is a peculiar pathological state into 
which certain predisposed people may be brought, and in which their 
actions may be automatically controlled by another person without 
their own consciousness or volition. In the cataleptic trance the body 
becomes merely an ingenious machine to be played upon by the 
hypnotizer. According to the second theory, hypnotism is an abnor- 
mal condition of the mental life in which images work themselves out 
more readily into expression, and in which the hypnotized person con- 
trols his own life under the suggestions of the hypnotizer. The first 
has been called the " neurosis theory," and the second the " sugges- 
tion theory." In the one, personal life is for the time wholly destroyed ; 
in the other, it is only warped and distorted. Without attempting to 
enter into this controversy, it need only be said, as is probably suf- 
ficiently evident from the context, that the claims of the Nancy people, 
led by Bernheim, are accepted in the present essay. Bernheim char- 
acterizes the process of hypnotism as " the induction of a peculiar 
psychical condition which increases the susceptibility to suggestion;" 
also he says : "It is suggestion that rules hypnotism." Wundt' says: 
" Die hauptsachlichste Entstehungsursache der Hypnose ist die Sugges- 
tion, d. h. die Mittheilung einer gefiihlsstarken Vorstellung." Profes- 
sor Titchener tersely says : "All the phenomena of hypnosis can be 
summed up in the single word suggestion. The operator suggests to 
the subject what he is to see and do; the subject suggests to himself 
that he shall enter the hypnotic state."'' Hypnotic suggestion is only 
a simplified and intensified form of the influence which one person 
exerts over another in the normal state. In this view the trance-state 
itself is the effect of suggestion. Bernheim, in Suggestive Therapeutics, 
p. 179, says: "Hypnotism does not really create a new condition ; 

I Grundriss der Psychologie, p. 321, ■^ Primer of Psychology, p. 275. 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 19 

there is nothing in induced sleep which may not occur in the waking 
condition, in a rudimentary degree in many cases, but in some to an 
equal extent." Again on page 190 he says: " The induced sleep does 
not depend upon the hypnotizer, but upon the subject ; it is his own 
faith which puts him to sleep. No one can be hypnotized against his 
will, if he resists the command. Baldwin in the Nation, August 11, 
1892, writes : "According to the Nancy view, there is nothing abnor- 
mal about hypnotic sleep. It is normal sleep artificially produced, and 
the method of producing sleep artificially — suggestion — is nothing 
more than a skilful and professional use of the hitherto unrecognized 
fact that our normal life is full of responses suggested to us by our 
surroundings. Of our usual surroundings, persons are the most 
important elements ; in other words, our social environment, our living 
milieu, gives constant tone and support to our lives and aids our devel- 
opment." Professor James judiciously sums up the argument for this 
position in his Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 601, as follows : 
" The suggestion theory may therefore be approved as correct, provided we 
grant the trance-state as its prerequisite. The three states of Charcot, 
the strange reflexes of Heidenhain, and all other bodily phenomena 
which have been called direct consequences of the trance-state itself, 
are not such. They are products of suggestion, the trance-state having 
no particular outward symptoms of its own ; but without the trance- 
state there, those particular suggestions could never have been suc- 
cessfully made." 

The two important facts in this view of hypnotism are the con- 
sciousness of the hypnotized person and the self-determination of his 
actions. Upon the first point Bernheim ^ says : " The impressions 
produced by artificial or induced sleep are always conscious at the 
time they are produced." With even greater definiteness MolP says : 

"There is no suggestion without consciousness A suggestion 

without consciousness is to me inconceivable." The same conception 
is also implied in the definition of suggestion in hypnotism by Sidis : ' 
'Suggestion is the intrusion into the mind of an idea ; met with more 
or less opposition by the person ; accepted uncritically at last ; and 
realized unreflectively, almost automatically." Of similar tenor is 
Fouillee's statement* that " What is called hypnotic suggestion is 
nothing but the artificial selection of one idea to ,the exclusion of all 
others, so that it passes into action." To ascribe to the hypnotic 

''■Suggestive Therapeutics, p. 157. '^Hypnotism, p. 267. Z Psychology of Suggestion, p. 15. 
^ Education from a National Standpoint, Greenstreet's translation, p. 12. 



2 o SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

subject personality, however modified and distorted, is to grant that 
all his mental processes are conscious to that personality. Conscious- 
ness, as the mind's awareness of its own states, is the one abiding 
characteristic of all mental life. It is not necessary here to deal with 
the theory of " unconscious mind," or of varying " degrees of con- 
sciousness." The mind that reacts upon a suggestion, whether in a nor- 
mal or an abnormal state, is necessarily conscious of its own processes. 

The hypnotized subject reacts upon the suggestions of his hypno- 
tizer, that is, all of his acts are self-determined, however much his nor- 
mal mental life may be abridged and constrained. His life shorn of 
its full normal play of ideas is none the less his life, concerning itself 
with its own materials and developing its own experiences. The sug- 
gestion and reaction are essentially the same as in the normal state, 
differing only in the unbalanced state of the subject. " Physiological 
and neuropathic suggestion is nothing but the exaggeration of facts 
which occur in the normal state." ' Self-directed personal life still 
exists, though narrowed in its field and biased in its movement. In 
this fragment of normal personality there are still reflection, judgment, 
volition — operating in the whole field of the abridged and distorted 
life. This is clearly seen in the refusal of a hypnotic subject, who has 
readily yielded himself to suggestive guidance in numberless minor 
acts, to perform under the most strenuous demand an immoral or 
criminal act at total variance with the integrity of his character. The 
man is still there, and "pulls himself together" for a successful 
struggle against a wrong to himself. May we not conclude that action 
under hypnotic suggestion is as truly conscious and voluntary as that of 
normal life ? 

Much that has been said of suggestion in abnormal life — in the 
hypnotic state — applies equally to suggestion in normal life. Here, 
as in the former case, to suggest an idea to another is to excite in him 
a notion upon which he proceeds to build up an experience. The 
chief difference, probably the only one, is that in the normal life the 
suggested image comes into the midst of an active play of a multitude 
of mental systems, each ready to claim the field of consciousness and 
to determine an experience. It must win its way to the life-center, 
establish its right to rule as the dominant factor in the life-movement 
in open, free competition with numberless other possible images. 
Stout finds the " suggestibility " of the hypnotic subject, or of the 
mentally weak in general, to consist essentially in the absence of the 

iGuYAu, tlducation ei hiriditi, p. 8. 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 2 1 

normal conflict of apperceptive systems for dominance. The possible 
mental field is narrowed by inhibition to one system, which is the 
whole of life, even to monomania. "A healthy condition of mind is 
characterized by a general excitability of all the mental systems com- 
posing the empirical Ego, which enables them to co-operate, com- 
pete, and conflict, with a comparative strength simultaneously 
determined by conditions both external and internal to the particular 
systems."' Coming into such a complex of psychic life, the suggested 
image must so touch that life as to be welcomed as its organic center 
in a true psychosis. It must by its intrinsic interest focus the whole 
movement in itself. " The first condition of normal suggestion is 
fixation of attention." ^ Starting with the centering of the life about 
the suggested image in " attention," the experience moves on to a 
motor discharge in some form of expression. Touched from without 
by a fact which the life recognizes as belonging to itself, it reacts by 
welcoming that fact as a temporary sovereign to whose feet it brings 
all its treasures. 

No better examples of the nature and process of mental suggestion 
can be found than in a social conversation between two friends upon 
the ordinary concerns of life. In such a conversation each remark is 
in its turn the completion of an experience of the speaker and the 
occasion of an experience for the hearer. The two lines of life are 
approximately parallel, bending now this way, now that under the 
influence of their reciprocal interaction. Since their apperceptive 
systems are different, no two experiences can be identical ; yet as each 
life impinges upon the other, it modifies its course by suggesting to it 
an image center. While the thoughts of the two persons have in gen- 
eral a common trend, each life moves forward in a continuous recon- 
structing of its own experience about constantly changing images. 
Each by expressing his own experience contributes to the life of the 
other in the only way in which one life can affect another, /. <?., by 
suggestion. 

Imitation has become a word to conjure with in dealing with the 
early development of the child under the influence of his associates. 
Psychologists and sociologists have in the past decade written much 
about "imitation in the child and in the race," the "imitative func- 
tion," the "laws of imitation," the "imitative faculty," the "imitative 
impulse," etc.; and much that has been written is very vague, lacking 
in true psychological definition. The term is used with all shades of 

■^Analytical Psychology, Vol. II, p. 156. = Sidis, Psychology of Suggestion, p. 45. 



2 2 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

meaning, from "mechanical repetition of the actions of another per- 
son" up to the great creative work of the true artist. It will doubtless 
help to clear up some of this indefiniteness if we return, as we so often 
do in our wanderings in philosophic thinking, to Aristotle. In the 
well-known definition of tragedy the major genus is " imitation," used 
in a sense that is clearly defined in the context. Imitation for Aristotle 
is not a mere reflection of a product ; it is a genuine creative act, not 
the mirroring of the product of the creative act of another. As an 
artist his poet is employed in "imitating things as they ought to be." 
In spite of all that has been said of late about "organic imitation" 
apart from consciousness, it is by no means established that there is 
any such thing as mere reflex action in the psychic world. One reads 
Professor Baldwin's very interesting and instructive discussion of 
"circular activity" with a constantly growing query as to whether he 
might not have said without qualification, on page 266 of the first volume 
of Mental Development, that "imitation is an instance of suggestive 
reaction,^'' implying in his predicate term a conscious response to an 
external stimulus. Is it not a rather forced classification of mental 
phenomena that assigns "volition to the man," "suggestion to the 
infant," "reflex action to the mocking-bird," and "instinct to the 
beaver?" Is it not mind that acts in each case, in essentially the same 
manner? Dr. Harris has stated the whole case so far as the "infant" 
is concerned in Psychologic Foundations of Education, p. 301 : 

To see the significance of imitation in the child-mind, we must look upon 
it not as a comparatively feeble and mechanical effort, as something deter- 
mined by outside influences, but as a phase of self-activity which is engaged 
in emancipating the self from heredity and natural impulse. We must not 
lose sight of this essential fact, that shows itself even in the most rudimentary 
of the phenomena of imitation. There can be no imitation whatever except 
on the part of self-active beings — in other words, only souls can imitate. 
" Imitation," -says M. Compayr6, "is the reproduction of what one has seen 
another do." It is therefore always to some extent an act of assimilation. 
Even if we extend the meaning of imitation so as to include unconscious 
mimicry and all phenomena akin to hypnotic suggestion, still it is self- 
activity that does the imitating. What is beheld as an act of another is 
converted by adoption into an act of self. The pride and pleasure that the 
infant exhibits on the occasion of his first conscious imitation has its root in 
this, that he has made something his own — has proved himself equal to 
imitating in himself a movement by his will — he has revealed his selfhood 
to some extent. This is the significance of play, which is chiefly imitation, 
that the undeveloped human being is learning to know himself by seeing 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 23 

what he can do. He is revealing himself to others and to himself, and getting 
strength in his individuality. Thus we see that there is an element of origin- 
ality in the most mechanical phase of imitation. The self is active and 
assimilative. It sees an external deed which it proceeds to make its own 
deed by imitation. The child proves itself to possess a human nature identi- 
cal with the one whom it imitates. 

To these very significant words of Dr. Harris should be added 
Preyer's statement in Mind of the Child: The Senses and the Will:^ 

In order to imitate one must first perceive through the senses ; secondly, 
have an idea what has been perceived ; thirdly, execute a movement corre- 
sponding to this idea However often imitation has the appearance of 

an involuntary movement, yet when it was executed the first time, it must 
have been executed with intention — /. <?., voluntarily. When a child imi- 
tates, it has already a will. 

These quotations express with such clearness and fulness my own 
conception of the nature of imitation that little more needs to be said 
here. Imitation is essentially, in all its phases, a matter of reaction to 
suggestion. It is the common process of all manifestation of life. All 
organic development proceeds in this way: the outer world impinges 
upon the nervous mechanism, and the sensuous life moves out to meet 
it in a more or less rationally ordered reaction. The effort to deter- 
mine when the infant "begins to imitate" the life of those about him 
must in the end prove as fruitless as the speculations of the theologians 
as to the origin of the individual human soul. The child begins to 
imitate when it begins to perceive the world about- it. 

Toute perception se ramene plus ou moins a une imitation, a la creation 
en nous d'un etat correspondant a celui que nous percevons chez autrui ; 
toute perception est une sorte de suggestion qui commence et qui, chez cer- 
tains individus, n'^tant pas neutralis^e par d'autres, s'acheve en actions.^ 

To the artificial opposition between "imitation" and "originality" 
— between "copying" and "creating" — are to be traced numberless 
evils of educational procedure. The assumption is that certain expe- 
riences may be had mediately or vicariously, that one may receive 
into his life the result of the experiencing of another done up in the 
"original package," without any true creative movement on his own 
part. On the other hand, it is assumed that in some experiences one 
creates ab initio, even exnihilo, wholly "original products." The error 
here consists in the idea that there are two distinct modes of experien- 
cing, rather than varying degrees of activity and self-direction. It is 
the same misconception that lies at the bottom of the neurotic theory 

I Brown's translation, p. 282. 2 Guyau, 'Education et herediU, p. 10. 



2 4 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

of hypnosis. All life is self-directed life, and all acts of organic being 
originate in self-activity. 

SUGGESTION IN EDUCATIVE GUIDANCE. 

In the preceding pages we have discussed at some length the nature 
of "suggestion" in both abnormal and normal life, seeking to free 
the term from its common limitation to certain manifestations in the 
hypnotic state and to show that it is a factor in all psychic move- 
ments. Before treating of its use in the processes of education, it is 
necessary to perform a somewhat similar service for the term "educa- 
tion," supplementing the brief discussion given on page ii. 

The term "education" is often used loosely to designate the whole 
process of development of the individual during the period of youth. 
Properly, however, it denotes the development which takes place 
under the intentional guidance of more mature persons. While 
immediate contact with the physical environment furnishes materials 
for enlarged life and stimulates to self-directed growth, there is no 
education in such self-ordered development. Environment cannot 
educate a man, nor can he "educate himself." He may systematically 
guide his own life in its constructive movement so as to reach a high 
degree of development, by availing himself fully of the materials in 
his physical and social environment ; but such unaided maturing of 
oneself lacks the characteristic element of education, namely, directive 
guidance by another. The teacher intentionally guides his pupil in the 
appropriation of life-materials and in the organization of the life- 
content] so as to make the development more rapid, consistent and per- 
manent. The term " teacher," as used here, designates anyone who 
gives conscious guidance to the life of another. It may be the parent, 
the minister, the school-teacher, the editor, the author — whoever 
intentionally directs the experiences of another. Education belongs 
peculiarly to the period of youth, though it is properly continued in 
varying degrees throughout life. It aims by the right ordering of the 
environment to secure a more healthy and more complete life. It is 
to the human infant what the gardener's cultivation is to the plant ; and 
just as the apple developed by the horticulturalists' art differs from the 
fruit of the wild tree, so the educated man differs from " nature's 
product." 

This limiting of the term "education" to what is often called 
" formal education " is not at all arbitrary. The narrower meaning is 
that of common speech. When we speak of a man's "education," we 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 2 5 

mean that development that he has received through the instruction 
and discipline of some form of school life; and of a man who has 
made himself a place among his fellows unaided, as far as that is pos- 
sible, by such sympathetic guidance, we say "he has accomplished 
much for a man lacking education." But we need not confine our 
claim for justification of our use of the term to common speech; 
those who attempt a scientific discussion of the aims and processes of 
education — even those who formally define the term in the broader 
sense — treat the whole matter from the standpoint of the teacher and 
constantly limit the meaning of the word to the guided maturing of 
the individual. It would certainly be an interesting study to consider 
critically the formal definitions of "education" in the more scientific 
treatises on that subject against the backgrounds of the respective 
treatises themselves ; but such an investigation is apart from our 
present purpose, and we must content ourselves with a somewhat dog- 
matic statement of what is believed to be, not only the true, but also 
the common, use of the term. It will, however, contribute to clear- 
ness in our discussion to notice briefly the various forms under which 
this definition may occur — forms determined by the different stand- 
points from which the definition is formulated, but all embodying 
substantially the same fundamental conception. 

Education may be defined as to its aim from two distinct points of 
view: the psychological and the sociological. Psychologically educa- 
tion is "the harmonious development of all the human powers" 
through their proper exercise ; sociologically, it is the " adaptation of 
the individual to the civilization into which he is born." These 
definitions are complemental, emphasizing different aspects of the 
same general conception. The psychological looks to the means ; the 
sociological to the end. It is in the latter sense that Dr. Harris has 
defined education as " the elevation of the individual into the race." 
It is the preparing of the individual for future social functioning, for 
sharing in the duties and privileges of social life, through participation 
in a simplified form of that life. Most of the classical definitions in 
educational literature can be arranged under the one or the other of 
these two classes ; and much that is unsatisfactory in educational 
theory and practice is due to such partial one-sided conceptions. Any 
adequate statement of the aim of education must recognize both the 
individual and the social factors. The "harmonious development of 
powers" requires as material means the facts of social life found in the 
common consciousness ; and the process of " socializing the individual " 



2 6 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

is by giving greater individual efificiency in the enjoyment and pro- 
ductive use of the facts of his social environment. The "individual 
man "and the " social man " are not two beings capable of separate 
development; the highest individual life involves the widest social 
life, and the richest social life demands the most perfect individual 
life. 

Education may also be defined as a product or as a process. As a 
product, education is a state of mental development and equipment 
fitting for mature life-functioning ; as a process, it is self-making 
through the progressive reconstruction of experiences under the stimu- 
lation of the physical and social environment. There is truth in each 
of these conceptions, though the latter is far more productive than the 
former. To emphasize the product-conception, to regard education as 
an equipment that can be quantitatively measured, encourages procras- 
tination of real life-functioning and makes school life artificial. Thus 
to make the final cause in educational -proctdnxQ future having instead 
of present being is to make much of life barren and meaningless. To 
be "educated" is not to have acquired a certain knowledge-content 
and to have developed a certain skill and grace in self-direction ; all 
this is a valuable accompaniment and result of education, but educa- 
tion itself is a matter of present growth for its own sake. It is a 
normal life-process, finding its meaning and value within the process 
itself. It is ordered and directed present life in its relation to the 
whole of life. 

Nevertheless the product-conception has value in educational 
theory. Each stage of life is preparation for the next stage, and the 
whole is a progressive development. All educational endeavor should 
recognize this continuity of life, and there should always be the for- 
ward look of anticipation of the fuller life to come. Thus the teacher 
at every stage of his guiding work should keep in mind the possibili- 
ties of future functioning; but he should not degrade the "school" 
into an artificial mechanism designed to prepare for a hypothetical 
future social state. Just as in the theological world man has suffered 
untold miseries from regarding the present life as a mere "proba- 
tionary state," preparation for a "heaven" after death, so in the educa- 
tional world the school life is vitiated by "preparing to live" in the 
" real life" of the business and social world. 

Again education may be defined from the standpoint of the teacher 
or from that of the pupil. From the side of the teacher, education is 
" the conscious direction which the more mature mind gives to the 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 27 

less mature in its efforts to develop, elevate, and inform itself ; " from 
that of the pupil, it is self-directed activity in progressive self-develop- 
ment under the guidance and stimulation of more mature leaders. 
These two definitions express but two aspects of the same process; 
and one or the other is to be preferred in view of the particular pur- 
pose of the definer. The central idea in both is that there can be no 
education without conscious guidance of one person by another. 
While it is conceivable that an individual could develop in direct 
contact with his physical environment, without the mediation and 
assistance of social life and institutions, such "■ rubbing into conscious 
life " by the friction of the physical world is not education, though the 
term is often used uncritically to include this so-called "informal 
education." 

We may now summarize critically the ideas involved in these 
various phases of our definition and gather the results into a formal 
enunciation of an explicit and comprehensive definition. First, as to 
its content, education is both social and individual. It is the process 
of socializing the individual through maturing him. The aim, as " a 
rationalized endeavor," is both social and psychological — social as it 
looks to functioning in society, and psychological as it looks to self-real- 
ization through normal life-processes. The materials of education are 
social ; the process is psychological. Individuals are " elevated into 
the race " by integrating into their lives experiences originating in the 
social environment. Second, as to its form, education is a process 
rather than a product — more, it is a process that is not merely a 
means to some external end, but a process that finds its end within 
itself. Present character, not future, is the end of the reconstruction 
of self in education. It deals with what the child now is as seen in 
relation to the whole of his life. It is a directing of his growth by 
intensifying, emphasizing, and classifying his passing experiences so as 
to enrich and strengthen his life. Education views life in its present 
phase as a continuous process building constructively toward an ideal 
end. Third, as to its scope, education must be restricted rigorously 
to what has been called " formal education," that is, to the intentional 
guidance of the maturing mind by the more mature mind. The 
source of the present confusion regarding the relation of psychology to 
pedagogy is due, so far as the pedagogists are to be blamed for it, to 
not restricting the field of pedagogy to what is strictly educational. 
The development of the human being considered apart from the 
rational guidance of his more mature associates is a proper subject of 



2 8 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

psychology, but not of pedagogy. Thus our discussion leads us to 
regard education as a psychological process to be viewed from the 
standpoint of the teacher. This conception is embodied in the 
definition given on page 1 1. More briefly it may be said that education 
is the guidance of the life of another toward the complete realization of its 
possibilities. 

Teaching is the process of educating as seen from the stand- 
point of the educator. To teach another is to determine his devel- 
opment by controlling the circumstances, ordering the materials, 
and stimulating the activity of his growth. Teaching is the art of 
education, as pedagogy is the science. As an art its product is ful- 
ness and vigor of life in the individual taught. The teacher forms the 
character of his pupil by determining his experiences. Probably no 
better definition of teaching has been formulated than that of Arnold 
Tompkins : " Teaching is the process by which one mind, from set 
purpose, produces the life-unfolding process in another ; " or as he 
also states it: "Teaching is the conscious process of producing 
mental experiences [in another] for the purpose of life-development." 
In its extent the term " teaching " is identical with the term " educa- 
tion," though an effort is often made to limit it to a narrower field. 
A good example of this error in restricting the meaning of the term 
is to be found in a late teacher's manual:' "The teacher's work is of 
a threefold character : he has in the first place to organize his school; 
secondly, to govern his children ; and thirdly, to teach.'' Since to teach 
is to present the best conditions for complete living and to incite to 
such living, it includes the organization of the school and the govern- 
ment of the children as well as the " teaching of knowledge." As a 
helper toward complete living, toward the realization of a rich, full 
life, the teacher's art embraces all that contributes directly to this end. 
There is no teaching without learning. The two processes are 
complemental ; or, rather, they are the two aspects of the same edu- 
cative process. The educator teaches ; his pupil learns. If the pupil 
does not learn simultaneously with the teaching effort of the educator, 
then there is no true teaching. Learning is the effect of which teach- 
ing is the cause ; and since no cause can exist, as a cause, apart from 
its effect, there can be no teaching without learning. Jacotot's defini- 
tion of "teaching " is significant here : " Teaching is causing another 
to learn." 

Teaching has two factors, instruction and discipline — the first as the 

I Landon, Principles and Practices of Teachittg and Class Management, p. 4. 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 29 

adding of knowledge-material to the soul-substance, and the second 
as the organization of the soul-content through its functional expres- 
sion. In instruction the teacher is employed in so ordering the 
available life-materials as to secure on the part of his pupil such an 
appropriation, both as to kind and quantity, as will contribute to the 
most healthful and vigorous growth. He seeks to enlarge the life 
through chosen experiences. From his wider view of life's possibili- 
ties and more definite conception of the highest good, he is enabled 
to select from the residue of race-experiencing the most nourishing 
materials and so to prepare and serve them as to secure their incor- 
poration into the individual life which he seeks to influence. Thus he 
needs to combine the qualifications of a good marketer, a good cook, 
and a good server of mental viands. He aims at mental growth by 
building into {in-struo) the life of his pupil materials taken from com- 
mon consciousness. Just as the gardener carefully places about the 
roots of the plant chosen food-materials and seeks to stimulate it to 
their appropriation and assimilation by controlling the circumstances 
of heat, light, and moisture, so the teacher, as instructor, controls the 
physical and social environment of his pupil with a definite view to 
the determining of the volume and form of the soul-content. 

In discipline the teacher is concerned with expression. All com- 
pleted experiencing eventuates in some form of expression. Every 
psychosis tends to an outgoing motor discharge. No life-movement 
is complete until it has expressed itself in and through the bodily 
structure. Expression is an element in all thinking. Language is 
more than "a means of expressing thought;" it is a means of think- 
ing. We do not think thoughts completely and then select verbal 
clothing for them ; we think in words. All constructive thought is in 
language. The volitional movement to express gives definite form to 
the thought ; and all life culminates in expression. The soul expresses 
itself in the body which it builds about it, expression being merely the 
culmination of the organizing psychic movements. This disciplinary 
side of education has not been recognized as a vital part of the acquisi- 
tive process itself. Expression is commonly treated as a means of 
exhibiting results already acquired, the teacher demanding formal 
expression of his pupils merely as a means of determining the existence 
of a completed mental state. It is not commonly regarded as an 
essential fact in the psychosis itself, but as a separable evidence that 
the psychosis has been. Thus the common "recitation" in the ele- 
mentary school is a barren performance upon dead forms of verbal 



30 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

Utterance, instead of a constructive thinking exercise culminating in 
normal expression of a present life-movement. In it the teacher, 
instead of guiding actual life, endeavors to discover what a past move- 
ment has been, thus attempting a psychological impossibility. What 
is true in the elementary school is true in slightly varied form in sec- 
ondary and higher education. Nowhere have teachers grasped the 
idea of the psychological nature of expression, and consequently we 
have the unnatural divorcing of instruction and discipline. 

The fallacy of "discipline" apart from knowledge-content is even 
more destructive of true education than that of securing the mechanical 
acquisition of knowledge through " instruction " that does not involve 
expression. One cannot be trained to live by any sort of intellectual 
gymnastics. Living is a growth, involving both the acquisition of 
materials and the organization of the structure. There is no training 
apart from the content on which we train; and no work of the teacher 
can have any possible educational value that does not enrich the con- 
tent of life through true growth. All education involves both instruc- 
tion and discipline ; there must be both increase in the volume of life 
and more perfect organization of its structure. 

It follows from our definition of " education " and the subsequent 
explication that all educative guidance must be affirmative in its char- 
acter. Education is a constructive guidance of life, conserving, 
organizing, and directing its good elements toward perfection of 
development and functioning. It consists essentially in encouraging 
and aiding the process of self-making along the natural line of normal 
growth. The educator must believe in humanity, must incorporate 
into his pedagogical creed the proposition that " man naturally grows 
right." He must recognize his powerlessness to originate in his 
pupil's life a movement or a state wholly foreign to the character of 
that life. If man were " born faced hellward," no human power could 
"convert him," whatever may be the possibilities on the divine side. 
Just as the plant builds up its plant life, under circumstances more or 
less favorable to a perfect realization of its planthood, so the human 
being builds up his humanity, more or less dwarfed and distorted by 
his environment, but still his humanity in its struggle toward perfect 
realization. It is not the teacher's business to change the "nature" 
with which he deals, but only to recognize it, foster it, and strengthen 
it. In so doing he can deal with the present life only, finding prepa- 
ration for the future in enriching the present. All life prepares for 
life, and there is no preparation for life but life itself. He who would 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 3 1 

live tomorrow must live today — not today as today merely, but today 
as a stage of the whole development. The teacher's work is necessarily 
limited to the directing of actually existent forces, that their resultant 
shall have a desired character ; and he must see the resultant in the 
actual present play of the forces. It is present character, not future 
character, that is the true object of education. Not to become a good 
man, but to be a good boy, is the highest ideal for the pupil. If the 
teacher is able to see that his pupil lives today as he ought to live for 
today's needs and opportunities, the life of tomorrow will be easy and 
natural, and a progressive development will be secured. 

One does not become essentially better by "quitting his meanness." 
Negative goodness is at best "good-for-nothingness." The secret of 
all goodness is in being good. One does not develop strength by deal- 
ing with his weakness ; but all genuine curative treatment is by direct- 
ing and strengthening "nature's powers." It is the teacher's business, 
like that of the true physician, to discover, guide, and encourage the 
life which the pupil actually has, treating all defects and weaknesses 
negatively only. His work is constructive, using nature's materials, in 
nature's way, and for nature's end. A full comprehension of this 
great truth would eliminate from our schools by far the greater part of 
all punishment, drill-work, and barren tasks that are now so destructive 
of normal child-life. 

ALL EDUCATIVE GUIDANCE IS THROUGH SUGGESTION AND REACTION. 

This fundamental law of pedagogy has been foreshadowed in all 
the preceding discussion on the nature of education ; and it now only 
remains to show as definitely and as concretely as possible its applica- 
tion in the teaching process. It is not a question of when to employ 
suggestion in teaching, but of how to employ it. The law is not a 
statement of what ought to be or what is best in educational practice, 
but rather of what everywhere is and has always been in all true edu- 
cational procedure. Teachers have always accomplished their work by 
suggestion, even when most unconscious of the real nature of their 
actions. The word "all" in the statement of the law above indicates 
the writer's answer as to when to employ suggestion. The claim is 
that there can be no education apart from suggestion. This will be 
established by answering the practical question : How does the teacher 
quicken and enlarge the mental life of his pupil by suggestion ? Of 
course, to prescribe definite rules for the practice of pedagogical sug- 
gestion is absurd quackery ; the procedure here, as in all true art, is by 



32 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

the rational use of materials in reaching an ideal end under the actual 
concrete conditions. In the article on "Suggestion " in the sixth vol- 
ume of Rein's Encyclopddisches Handbuch der Pddagogik, Wendt says : 
" Die Anwendung der padagogischen Suggestion kann nicht durch 
Regeln erlautert und geordnet werden. Diese Anwendung erfordert 
Takt." Still it is possible to indicate in a general way and to illus- 
trate by examples the place of suggestion in teaching. 

"Education, in my opinion, is nothing else than a totality of 
co-ordinated and reasoned-out suggestions." ^ In education the 
teacher brings into the life of his pupil through suggestion a succes- 
sion of images, which, operating as germinant centers of experien- 
cing, determine progressively the line of his life-development. He 
seeks to guide the life from within, that is, to influence the develop- 
ment by the communication of a factor that is spontaneously wrought 
out in the activity of the life itself. In all true teaching no effort is 
made to constrain the life of the pupil from without, to force its cur- 
rent by external pressure. The pupil's life is modified by presenting 
to him a conception of what he may be or do and an incentive for its 
realization. In this consists the whole art of teaching. The teacher 
initiates the experience and provides for its motor discharge. 

Pedagogical suggestion, it must be insisted, is a normal life-process; 
it is not hypnotic influence. In Wendt's article, quoted above, he says: 

Mit dieser [Suggestion im Zustand der Hypnose] hat die padagogische 
Suggestion nur ausnahmsweise etwas gemein, denn nur in wenigen speziel- 
len Fallen darf die Hypnose in der Erziehung Anwendung finden und kann 
von einer Verbindung der padagogischen Suggestion mit der Hypnose die 
Rede sein. 

In an earlier part of this discussion an effort was made to show 
that suggestion in hypnosis is essentially the same as suggestion in 
the normal state; but this does not signify that the conditions are the 
same. In the hypnotic state the life-current is narrowed to a mere 
rill, easily deflected in any desired direction. Doubtless hypnotic 
suggestion could be employed for educational purposes — in fact, that 
is just what is done in the curative treatment of various diseased states. 
But a Heilmittel is not a true type of a Lehrmittel. The teacher's work 
is not essentially curative or corrective, but constructive and directive. 
The " health-pedagogy " of the teacher is affirmative in character, sub- 
stituting health for disease. Drastic counteractive treatment has no 
place in education. Though a child might be " cured " of an evil 

I GuYAU, Education et heredite, p. xv. 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 33 

habit through post-hypnotic suggestion, the possible evil consequences 
are too great to be risked. Whatever may be the final verdict of the 
medical world upon degrading free personality to a neurotic state for 
even the most benevolent ends, it may be safely asserted that this is 
not the field for the teacher. He must deal with life as he finds it, 
with the most reverent attitude toward the personalities of his pupils. 

Since all normal growth is right growth, it is only necessary for 
the teacher to show the child how he can experience the best, how he 
can live the most completely. A healthy life inspired by good moral 
instincts is easily guided toward the " highest good," not only as an 
ultimate aim, but in each separate act of experiencing. We lead 
people to better life by suggesting the conception that they are in 
reality better than they appear; to assign to them right motives is to 
induce them to justify the assumption, on the other hand, to consider 
them base is to strongly urge them to be so. One makes himself moral 
by believing that he is moral in his true inner manhood. To make 
one conscious of his goodness is the true secret of all moral education. 
It is a fundamental postulate of all pedagogy that humanity is essen- 
tially good; and this is applied to the individual case by presupposing 
in the individual the germs of the life we would have him live. Good- 
ness is more than the mere negation of badness; it is life itself in its 
true development; " it is the natural way of living." 

Guyau^ says: 

All education should be directed to this end, namely, to convince the 
child that he is capable of good and incapable of evil, in order to give him 
this ability and this inability; to persuade him that he has a strong will, in 
order to communicate to him force of will; to make him believe that he is 
morally free, master of himself, in order that "the idea of moral freedom," 
may tend to realize itself progressively. 

To clearly conceive the possible in normal life-functioning is to 
proceed at once to make it actual. The ideal is thus the formative 
real. 

In the particular teaching act the teacher directs attention by sug- 
gestion to a phase of life and provides for the culmination of the 
experience in a definite expressive movement. For example, suppose 
the teacher desires to secure from his pupils more strenuous effort in 
their study. He says, on the proper occasion: "How well we have 
done our work today! We really have understood it all, and have dis- 
cussed it clearly. The lesson for tomorrow will lead us a little farther 

I O^, cit,, p. 17. 



34 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

into the same subject, but there is also a new discovery which I know 
we shall all enjoy." The suggestion of the ability to do good work 
made here, carrying with it the less definite suggestion of the obliga- 
tion, will in the natural course of things work out the desired result. 
Again, suppose the teacher wishes to teach the value of the accurate 
measurement of space dimensions, or more immediately to teach the 
use of the graduated measuring scale, having supplied his pupils with 
such rulers, he will in their presence use one of the rulers in determin- 
ing the length and width of his desk or of a book, and then leave 
them free to measure such objects as present themselves to their 
convenience or fancy. A suggestive question as to the use that a car- 
penter can make of such a ruler will start a variety of exploring 
expeditions about the room. The composition by the pupils in the 
University Elementary School of simple songs, both words and music, 
is accomplished wholly through suggestion. The season of the year 
or the lesson in history furnishes the theme, and the tactful teacher 
guides by stimulating touch the creative work. The song is the 
expression of the life of the pupils themselves, felt by them to be so 
both in matter and form. It is the expression of genuine experien- 
cing under the most unobtrusive guidance. In teaching various forms 
of inventional drawing, such as industrial designing, the motif pre- 
sented by the teacher suggests a figure to be elaborated by the pupil. 
In elaborating the design the pupil feels the pleasure of creating and 
is scarcely conscious that he does not originate the entire work. The 
proper " assigning of a lesson " in any subject is a suggestion of 
possible ordered experiencing by the pupil. The judicious teacher 
starts a movement which the pupil completes in the natural function- 
ing of his own powers. The life is touched suggestively, and interests 
are aroused which lead on to active endeavor in the subsequent private 
study. By a suitable " preliminary drill " the way is opened for ear- 
nest living in a new and wider field. In all true teaching the impetus 
to master the task set is found in the spontaneous life of the pupil, 
who simply lives out the suggestion given by the teacher. 

What is known as "the power of example" is a mighty force in 
determining the life of the child. In the very simplicity of his life he 
is more open to suggestion than the adult person ; and the circum- 
stances of his life readily influence his actions. Some years ago Bishop 
Huntington, of New York, emphasized in a forcible manner the value 
of " unconscious tuition " in school work. In the opening sentences 
of the address he says : 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 35 

By unconscious tuition I mean that part of a teacher's work which he 
does when he seems not to be doing anything at his work at all. It has 
appeared to me that some of the most nutritive and effective functions of an 
instructor are really performed while he seems least to be instructing. To 
apprehend these fugitive, subtile forces, playing through the business of edu- 
cation with such fine energy, and if possible to bring them within the range 
of practical dealing, is the scope of my present design.' 

Again on page 5 he says : 

My main propositions are these three : first, that there is an educating 
power issuing from the teacher, not by voice or by immediate design, but 
silent and involuntary, as indispensable to his true function as any element 
in it ; second, that this unconscious tuition is yet no product of caprice or of 
accident, but takes its quality from the undermost substance of the teacher's 
character; and, third, that, as it is an emanation flowing from the very spirit 
of his own life, so it is also an influence acting insensibly to form the life of 
the scholar. 

To the fundamental conception of this address we can give most hearty 
assent. The teacher's work is most effective when he obtrudes him- 
self least upon the personality of his pupil. It is what he gently sug- 
gests that is most fruitful in the lives of those whom he would guide. 
It is also true that the pupil learns much from suggestions originating 
in the example of his teacher, in which there is no intentional guidance 
at all. Thus strong belief and active life in the teacher beget like 
states in his pupils. The pupils imitate the tones, the gestures — all 
mannerisms — of the teacher, reproducing in their own lives, without 
conscious intention, the good and the bad alike of the teacher's life. 
It is not the external expression alone that they " copy ;" the moral 
qualities of the teacher's life affect in a silent way their lives. As 
truly as masses of matter act upon each other by unseen forces, moral 
beings influence each other constantly through equally intangible means. 
The teacher who lives in the presence of the child lives into his life 
powerful factors for good or evil. 

But the title chosen by Dr. Huntington seems a most unfortunate 
one for any strictly pedagogical interpretation of his thoughts. He 
designates the unintentional influence as "unconscious tuition," thus 
saying that a teacher can teach without " teaching." His expression 
is a contradiction. There cannot be unconscious " tuition." The word 
" tuition " is a word of essentially active signification, meaning to 
" care for," to "watch over" as a protector, hence actively to instruct 
in that which is most beneficial for the guarded life. All tuition must 

I Unconscious Tuition, p. 3. 



36 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

be conscious and intentional, however vague the aim be. It is the 
teacher's duty so to order his own life that all his actions may speak 
to his pupils for their good. Conscious that " like begets like," he 
must live as he would have his pupils live. He must participate sym- 
pathetically in their lives, so that his own stronger life may incite in 
them the impulses to higher living. We demand of the pastor not 
only that he shall teach his people by formal utterance how they ought 
to live, but also that his own life shall be a daily example of good 
living. Equally we demand of the teacher in our schools that his 
"walk and conversation" be consciously included in his means of 
teaching. Froebel's, " Come let us live with the children," has a 
deeper meaning than is usually found in it. It is in living with his 
pupils that the teacher teaches them to live. He takes them into 
partnership with him in this business of directing life's affairs. The 
true teacher is a senior partner in a firm whose business is living; and 
he shares equitably with his fellows the responsibilities and the profits. 
With Rousseau, though in a far higher sense than he ever conceived of, 
he can say, " To live is the trade I wish to teach my pupil ; " and he can 
realize his desires by securing participation in the duties and pleasures 
of the life he wishes pupils to lead, thus leading them into life through 
life. 

Study is consciously intensified mental activity directed toward a 
definite cognitive end. In its etymology, the word " study " means 
" to pursue eagerly." In study one pursues with more or less eagerness 
an experience which he seeks to realize. For example, the student of 
the declension oipenna endeavors to intensify his mental life and to 
direct it toward the realization in his own consciousness of the formal 
succession of case forms. One may study without guidance, determin- 
ing by reflection a phase of life upon which to fix persistently the 
attention and about which to concentrate his constructive abilities ; 
but in childhood study is usually under the guidance of a teacher. 
Without study there can be no vigorous growth. It is only intense 
life that is healthy and that leads to strong character. To teach well 
is to incite to study, to intensify attention, and to secure the formation 
of habits of strenuous life. It is not enough merely to direct by sug- 
gestive touch a lazy current ; true teaching accelerates the movement, 
converting the passive suffering of experiences into active seeking for 
them. The suggestive touch must be made so as not only to deter- 
mine the direction of the life, but also to lead it to greater effort for 
self-realization. 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 3 7 

The chief means of guiding study is the recitation. There is 
probably no word in the pedagogical terminology more abused than 
the word " recitation ; " certainly there is no word whose current use is 
more at variance with the central conception of this thesis. The so- 
called " recitation " is too often artificially divorced from the vital 
movement of the acquisition of knowledge. It is conducted as a 
testing for the results of experiences already completed. Pupils are 
" examined " upon what they are supposed to have " learned " in pre- 
vious " study. " This inquisition degenerates into a barren perform- 
ance upon the husks of knowledge, which is utterly devoid of any 
educational value. The " recitation period," instead of being a time 
of true experiencing under the stimulation and guidance of the 
teacher, is ^. post mortem examination into the facts of past life. In the 
true recitation, however, the teacher guides the life of his pupil to a 
more vigorous growth through suggesting materials and demanding 
expression. Such a recitation is related both to the previous " private 
study " and to that which is to follow. As a true life-epoch it supple- 
ments and corrects that which has taken place under the less immediate 
direction of the teacher ; and, looking forward, it suggests image cen- 
ters and starts processes of experiencing which may be carried on to 
completion by the pupil in his subsequent study alone. The recitation 
is thus, on the one side, a sort of intellectual clearing-house, and, on 
the other, a general " office hour" for the more immediate supervision 
of the study. In guiding his pupils in their study, which is the chief 
business of the teacher, the assigning of tasks and the examining of 
results are only incidental. The teacher is the guider of this eager 
endeavoring after complete living ; and the recitation is the time when 
he can most effectually direct the zealous seeking for that which gives 
most life. The recitation is essentially the study period of the particu- 
lar subject discussed, the time to be especially devoted to directing the 
study in that subject. Thus in the "geography recitation " geography 
should be studied under the immediate guidance and stimulation of the 
teacher, and all private study should be held subsidiary to the work of 
this more intense period. The preliminary questioning on the results 
of the preceding private study should be merely preparatory to the new 
advance now to be made ; and by far more attention should be given 
to indicating fields to explore, i. e., to " assigning the lesson," than to 
examining for results of the previous exploration. The expression of 
the recitation should always be the natural completion of /r^i-^«/ experi- 
ences ; and even in " review " the experiences must be new. There is 



38 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

no more serious error in all educational procedure than the attempt to 
warm into life the corpse of a past experience — to bring back again 
an experience that we have had. There should never be expression for 
expression's sake, but always as a manifestation of growth in its normal 
movement. So conducted the recitation becomes the true center of all 
school work, a real means of suggestive guidance. 

Just as in the case of the word "recitation," the word "school" 
needs to be freed from a false connotation to reconcile it to the univer- 
sality of our law of suggestion. A school, as the chief educational 
instrumentality, is commonly regarded as a place where immature per- 
sons are equipped for later life-functioning by gathering a certain fund 
of useful knowledge and acquiring a certain power of self-direction — 
in short, a place where persons prepare to live. No value is assigned to 
the school life as such ; it finds its significance solely in the preparation 
which it affords for a future hypothetical stage of existence. In such a 
view, one does not live in the school, but simply gets ready to live. 

A school, defined with reference to the ideal of this essay, is a 
simplified form of social life — simplified by eliminating all that is nega- 
tive and destructive, and by conserving and organizing all that is affirm- 
ative and constructive. In the school specially equipped and trained 
guides determine minds toward such normal growth as gives the fullest 
and most symmetrically organized life. The teacher, dealing with the 
actual present phase of the life, directs it in accordance with the con- 
tinuous whole. Beginning in the possible present, he builds toward an 
ideal future, without, however, losing sight of the fact that this present 
is real life of value for itself. Whatever of life he desires for his pupils 
in the future he leads them to participate in under the simplified con- 
ditions of the present. Considering life as a continuous growth, he 
sees that the only preparation for any stage of it is to be found in the 
activities of the preceding stages. One stage prepares for another by 
furnishing the material basis and the motive for it ; and each stage is a 
cross-section of the whole life-current, concerned solely with its own 
experiences. In it the acquisition of materials and the organization of 
structure is for its own purposes, nothing being gathered that does not 
belong to the immediate present. The school is then a social organi- 
zation for mutual assistance in the prosecution of studies under the 
leadership of a more mature member of the organization. It affords 
the best possible means of effective guidance through suggestion of 
desirable modes of functioning. In the true school the children live 
under the unobtrusive direction and stimulation of the teacher. 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 39 

The curricula of the school, the organized body of available educa- 
tive material, constitute a current in which the pupil's life is persistently 
confined by his teacher. The "branches of study" are so many 
phases of possible experiencing to be employed by the teacher in 
broadening and intensifying the life that he guides. Arithmetic, if 
employed rationally at all, is thought to afford definitely selected 
materials for suggesting certain desirable forms of experience. In the 
residua of race-experiencing preserved in the text-books the teacher has 
a mine of wealth for his educative needs. He selects the matter and 
presents it to his pupil with a view to influencing his life both in the 
immediate present and throughout its continued development. He 
does not attempt to " store up" ?^«//z'^^ life-materials, but only to guide 
in the appropriation from the content of common consciousness of that 
which contributes to the individual life. The curriculum is thus a 
mediation of the environment designed for use in educative guidance. 

It is in ^^ punishment " that we find that function of the teacher, if 
indeed it be a function of the teacher, most at variance, both in theo- 
retical conception and in current practice, with true educational guid- 
ance. In order to reconcile this negative element of educational 
procedure to our conception of guidance by suggestion, it will be 
necessary to discuss briefly three points : first, the general nature and 
function of punishment in the bettering of humanity ; second, the 
common aims and methods of school punishments ; and, third, the 
sense in which punishment may be made to contribute afi&rmatively to 
education. 

Punishment is the intentional infliction of pain on a wrongdoer in 
recognition of his wrong acts. The essential element in punishment 
\% pain, physical or mental. It must come as an opposing or disturb- 
ing element into the pleasure of life, temporarily interrupting and 
modifying its normal movement. It must also be intentionally applied. 
Pain unintentionally given to another is not punishment, however 
much it may appear to be retribution for wrong done. " Nature " 
does not punish, though we often speak of the suffering which one 
undergoes in consequence of an improper use of his physical environ- 
ment as "nature's punishment." In such an expression there is doubt- 
less always a more or less clearly defined personification of " nature," 
in which we regard her as intentionally inflicting a penalty for a wrong 
done. One person may, however, employ " natural consequences " as 
means of inflicting punishment on another, that is he may control 
natural reactions rationally for his own ends. Also a person may pun- 



40 , SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

ish himself, by bringing about intentionally states of pain in himself 
in recognition of his own wrong acts and as a self-inflicted retribution. 
In all cases the sufferer of punishment must be recognized as a wrong- 
doer. Pain inflicted upon another is not punishment unless in recog- 
nition of wrong done. The sufferer may not actually be a wrongdoer, 
but he must be recognized as such by the inflictor of the punishment. 
Further, the pain must be considered to be in some sense a suitable 
reward for the wrong acts, a just return for specific evil deeds. The 
penalty is proportioned by the punisher to the extent of the wrong as 
seen by him — so much wrong, so much pain. 

Writers upon ethics generally recognize three distinguishable ends 
of punishment : first, to prevent others from committing like offenses ; 
second, to vindicate the law ; and third, to educate or reform the 
offender. Sometimes the emphasis is laid upon one, sometimes upon 
another of these ends ; but usually the first and second receive the 
stress, though the third is probably never wholly wanting in the doc- 
trine of any modern writer. Paulsen states the prevalent view -^ "The 
reform of the convict by education is not included in the purpose of 
punishment as such." On the other hand, Seth says f " The end of 
punishment is to bring home to the man such a sense of guilt as shall 
work in him a deep repentance for the evil past, and a new obedience 
for the time to come." Also Plato, in Protagoras, Jowett's translation, 
324 B, forcibly presents the educative end : 

No one punishes an evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he 
has done wrong — only the unreasonable fury of the beast acts in that man- 
ner. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for 
a past wrong which cannot be undone ; he has regard to the future, and is 
desirous that the man who is punished may be deterred from wrong again. 
He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue 
is capable of being taught. 

This conception of Plato's is becoming more and more that of the 
best modern political and ethical thought. Vindictiveness and brutal 
revenge are giving place to a desire to make men better, both in the 
social body and in the individual man upon whom the punishment falls. 
It is no longer literally " an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," 
though it still lacks much of " turning the other cheek to the smiter." 
The dominant ideas in punishment are still the "protection of society " 
and the " maintaining of the majesty of the law," with but little regard 
to reformation of the individual offender. 

I System of Ethic s, Thilly's translation, p. 6n. ■^A Study of Ethical Principles, p. 337. 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 4 1 

In school punishments we have the same diversity of conception 
regarding the ends to be attained. For one teacher all his punish- 
ments are concerned primarily with " vindicating the majesty of the 
law;" for another, with securing the best conditions for his teaching 
through an arbitrarily superimposed government ; and for still another, 
with correcting the wrong life through repentance following upon a 
realization of the evil done. One teacher is always watchful for infrac- 
tions of " rules " for school behavior, either explicit formulations or 
implicit conventionalities ; and on the discovery of such wrongs 
against authority he visits upon the offender punishment sufficient to 
heal the wounded dignity. Another, impressed with the idea that a cer- 
tain degree of " order " is necessary for efficient work in " instructing in 
knowledge," employs punishment as a means of securing such an 
orderly state of his school, with little concern about its effect upon the 
lives of the individuals punished ; the individual is, in fact, punished 
for the good of the community, as "an example." A third conceives 
punishment to be a sort of " counter-irritant," valuable as a means of 
relieving an internal congestion of " badness," a means of purging the 
moral life of its impurities. In schoolroom practice the punishment is 
too often a " squaring of the account." Offenses accumulate until, the 
patience of the teacher being exhausted, he endeavors at one fell swoop 
to deal out retribution "on general principles." In zealously "guard- 
ing the law" and in anxiously "keeping order" the teacher makes 
unnecessary issues with his pupils, in which the mastery is often won 
by brute force alone. This same artificial "governing" of the pupils 
gives rise to threats of punishment to be inflicted for anticipated wrong 
acts. 

It should not be inferred that this is a true picture, either in theory 
or practice, of the punishment inflicted by all teachers ; there is one 
here and there who in the spirit of true teaching has apprehended the 
real nature of this negative force in teaching and has learned to 
employ it in the building of character. 

Whatever may be the theory of punishment in the state, or of 
divine punishment of disobedient man, " school punishment " is, by 
the very circumstances of its use, essentially educational Every act of 
punishment in the school must be an educational act ; its only excuse 
for being is that it may serve as a means of guiding the growing life 
of the child. Just as the nurseryman in the pruning of a tree cuts off 
a branch, not merely that he may remove it from the tree, but that he 
may thereby foster and accelerate the growth of the tree as a whole, so 



42 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

the teacher uses punishment, a negative means, for an affirmative result 
in the life of his pupil. This can be accomplished only by making the 
state of pain in some way the starting-point for a healthy, pleasurable 
experience, that is, the punishment must be made to suggest an image 
for a constructive life-movement. This cannot be done by dwelling 
upon the wrong and its consequent painful results. Prolonged " sor- 
row for sin " is not a fruitful source of right living. Wood, in his 
Studies in the Thought World, page i68, puts this matter very clearly: 

One cannot afford to think much about evil, even for the well-intentioned 
purpose of its suppression. The true remedy is its displacement. Thought- 
space given to it confers realism, familiarity, and finally dominion. To 
silence discordant strings in ourselves or others we must vibrate their oppo- 
sites. To truly sympathize with a friend who is quivering with trouble or 
sorrow is not to drop into his rhythm and intensify it — as is usual — but to 
lift his consciousness by striking a higher chord in unison. The road to men- 
tal and physical invigoration lies through a dynamics of formative thought. 
Our way to elevate other lives is also through their creative mental energies. 

It is difficult to formulate in definite statement the conception of 
punishment as a means of suggestive guidance to right living, not 
because of the uncertainty of the principle, but because the common 
thought of the race is thoroughly saturated by a totally different con- 
ception of the nature and use of punishment. What is contended for 
is that all school punishment shall lead over directly to the affirmative 
side, that the very pain itself shall blossom into the happiness attend- 
ant upon right living. No act of punishment can have a place in the 
school that is not definitely designed to lead to an experience of nor- 
mal life-functioning. It is the teacher's business to form life, not to 
reform it, and every corrective measure must be essentially that of dis- 
placing the evil by the good. A simple example will help us see how 
this can be done. 

A mother who was much distressed by a growing caprice and petu- 
lance in her little daughter watched for an opportunity to strengthen 
in her a habit of rational choice and patient consideration of possible 
lines of conduct. One day in the early spring, when some little 
friends were going for a short walk, the little girl was eager to join 
them. Her mother gave her consent, with the provision that she should 
put on a light jacket as protection against the cool air. The little 
maiden promptly said: "Then I will not go!" At which her mother 
stepped to the open window and said to the little friends waiting out- 
side: "Jennie says she will not go today." The little girls went off 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 43 

without Jennie, who pleaded in vain with her mother to be permitted 
to reconsider her hasty decision. The mother, though firm, was very 
gentle and carefully avoided any crimination or intensifying of the 
sense of loss. Her whole attitude indicated confidence in her little 
daughter's ability to order her life more rationally; and she carefully 
watched for an immediate opportunity to direct this aroused sense of a 
better nature to a constructive expression. This she found in a sim- 
ple act of service. A magazine was to be carried to the grandmother 
in another room ; the opportunity to do this for her was presented by 
the mother to her child ; and an encouraging smile caused the awak- 
ened sense of ability and obligation to express itself in a definite act 
of rational self-determination. Thus the disappointment in itself was 
the image center out of which under gentle guidance a genuine expe- 
rience of right living was built. The conception of wrong to self was 
the suggestion of a right line of future action. The mother so 
applied the punishment that its pain was chiefly in the feeling of self- 
inflicted injury to the true nature, to the better self, the selfish regret 
for the pleasure lost being a mere incident. The punishment was 
made simply the occasion of the beginning of a more vigorous life- 
movement. The wrong act was seen in contrast to the fulness of the 
true normal life, a discordant note in its harmony; and a right expe- 
rience was suggested, which the mother wisely led to its comple- 
tion in rationally determined expression. 

In the example just given the punishment belongs to the class 
known as " natural consequences," as distinguished from " arbitrary 
punishments" in which the penalty has no causal connection with the 
wrong act. But even in this latter class it is possible to get affirmative 
results, though certainly it is more difficult to do. Suppose a little boy 
has persisted in disobedience until his father says: "Joe, you have not 
tried to do what I asked you to do. Now, tomorrow afternoon when 
we all go to the lake you cannot go with us. You must stay at home." 
Here the punishment has no immediate connection with the offense ; 
and in order that it be educational in its effect, the child must have 
loving confidence in his father's benevolent attitude toward him and 
in his knowledge of what is just in penalty for wrong acts. With these 
conditions this wholly artificial penalty may be made to contribute to 
right living. It is here, as in the former example, merely a question 
of promptly leading the thought to the ability and the obligation to act 
in accordance with a newly recognized better nature. All punishment, 
to have any educational value, must be made to suggest indirectly 



44 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

images for the affirmative reconstruction of experiences ; and in the 
infliction of punishment the teacher must guide the pupil's thought 
immediately into normal channels. Punishment, like all true educa- 
tional procedure, \odk% forward, not backward, and deals with present 
life with a view to its complete realization. 

Should punishment be inflicted for the mere neglect to do right, 
where there is no overt act of "wrong"? In some cases it certainly 
should, being employed as a means of quickening the life-movement. 
The greater part of what is called "wrong" is only the negative of 
right life, due chiefly to ignorance of how one ought to live. The 
fundamental error in our attempts at " moral education" is demand- 
ing of children that they know on authority and accept without 
question our standards of right conduct, canons that we have realized 
in our own consciousness only through years of progressive experien- 
cing. All educative punishment is instructive, giving clearer knowl- 
edge of the nature of right life. In punishment the teacher is to teach 
his pupil, in the dual sense of that word ; that is, he is both to enlarge 
and to organize his pupil's life. 

A still deeper question is : Is punishment a necessary means of 
education ? Doubtless there are cases in which we must answer this 
in the affirmative; but in the great majority of cases in which punishment 
is inflicted in the school and in the home it is not necessary, and leads to 
destructive experiences. Its pain too often but further disturbs the life- 
current, which might otherwise be easily directed into a normal flow 
by immediate constructive guidance. Often the child's apparent stub- 
bornness is only the lack of a proper center for right action. Dr. 
Carpenter' says: 

A suggestion kindly and skilfully adapted to its [the child's] automatic 
nature, by directing the turbid current of thought and feeling into a smoother 
channel, and guiding the activity which it does not attempt to oppose, shall 
bring about the desired result, to the surprise alike of the baffled teacher, the 
passionate pupil and the perplexed bystanders. 

Here we have the secret of all guidance, to lead from the evil by lead- 
ing toward the good. What does it matter whether we leave unrequited 
the wrong acts, if we can secure the right life? It is not the wrong 
corrected, but the right done, that is the measure of the moral life. The 
physician does not labor to destroy the disease, but to make the man 
well. His motto, like that of the true teacher, is : Seize upon life 
wherever it may be found, and strengthen and develop it, thus leaving 

'^Mental Physiology, p. 135. 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCA TION 4 5 

the weakness and the wrong to drop away under the accelerated move- 
ment of the healthy life. 

A good example of this mode of treating wrong life is given in a 
story told by a matron of the reformatory at Elmira, N. Y. A woman 
who became an inmate of the institution appeared to be so indurated in 
her evil nature and malevolence as to care for no one and to have no 
healthy interest in anything about her. She seemed to be a veritable 
Ishmaelite in the loving atmosphere of that home, and no sympathetic 
advance met with any other response than the growl of an animal at 
bay. Her life had been so poisoned by man's inhumanity that she saw 
good in no one, and neither recognized nor expressed sympathy. For 
many days she lived — rather existed — in the midst of her physical and 
social environment without manifesting any normal life-interest that 
could be made a starting-point for a healthy growth. Without chiding 
or attempting to intrude into this barricaded, barren field, the matron 
waited patiently, watching for a sign of the real life which she had 
learned to expect somewhere in even the most warped and stunted 
characters. At last the door was found. The matron placed trays, in 
which some silkworms were at work in various stages of development, 
where the woman must pass them in the meaningless round of her 
daily life. For two or three days she passed indifferently by the active 
little workers and their loving friend. Then she stopped and con- 
temptuously watched the matron tending to the wants of her little 
pets. At last curiosity forced her to ask what they were. To which 
the wise teacher, carefully concealing the hope which was aroused by 
this question, replied : " Oh they are only silkworms." Each day the 
woman came to watch the worms fed and cared for, with a growing 
interest that broke out from time to time in half-suppressed questions. 
The watchful teacher, biding her time, at last seizing the right oppor- 
tunity, said one morning suddenly to her watcher: " Mary, I must go on 
an errand for a moment, to speak to a man about some work. Will you 
please take care of the worms while I am gone?" The ready assent 
and the sympathetic flash of light in Mary's eyes told the teacher that 
the victory had been won. Life was found, and it only remained to 
guide it. From this slender beginning Mary grew under loving guid- 
ance to true womanhood, a marked example of what affirmative teach- 
ing will accomplish where punishment in any form would only have 
intensified the existing evils. The first suggestion to better living came 
doubtless in seeing the earnest industry of the little worms. In them 
at least life appeared to be real and to have some meaning in its activi- 



46 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

ties. Then the loving care of the matron for her helpless little charges 
suggested that one life is in some sense responsible for happiness in 
another and that all is not selfishness. Then there came, in the request 
for the slight service, a suggestion of personal worth recognized by 
another. Thus unobtrusively did one life kindle to a glow the dying 
embers of another. This is what may take place — what must take 
place; there is no other way — in the moral guidance of the schoolroom. 
The "bad boy" is made good by leading out to self-realization the ger- 
minant goodness of his normal humanity. Human beings are born to 
live right, and the guiding touch of the teacher may aid in living. 

NEGATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF THE LAW, 

The law of educative guidance, as formulated on page 3 1 , carries with 
it two important negative implications : first, that there can be no 
education apart from suggestion ; second, that there can be no educa- 
tion where there is no conscious reaction on the part of the pupil to 
the stimulation applied by the teacher. While the discussion of these 
two implied propositions is in effect a restatement from the negative 
side of the thought already presented in explanation and vindication 
of the law itself, such further defining and explication seems to be 
demanded in view of the muddy thought in vogue regarding educa- 
tional principles. 

One person cannot exert educative influence upon the life of 
another mechanically; that is, he cannot manipulate the factors of the 
life as he handles things in his material environment. He cannot dis- 
solve a state of consciousness by the introduction of a reaction agent 
with the definiteness and certainty of a chemist. He cannot force 
into the life of another an element wholly foreign to it, and hence he 
cannot control that Wit. from without. All his control must be exer- 
cised through elements found within the life itself and by means of 
the life's own normal activities. One may knock at the door, but he 
cannot force an entrance ; it is only as the life itself gives him welcome 
that he can participate in it. The teacher cannot give his "knowl- 
edge" to his pupil; he can only express what he knows, i. <?., what he 
is, in the hope that his pupil may be induced to know, i. e., to be, 
something similar in general content and form. A man's knowledge 
is himself, and it cannot be transferred, either en masse or in its ele- 
ments, to another; also the pupil's knowledge is his own creation, the 
manifestation of his own life, and cannot be appropriated mechanically 
from the experiences of another. Each person's character is unique 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 47 

in its individuality. It grows naturally through simple life-functioning 
and cannot be made by external manipulation. Our law, then, on 
the negative side means this : There can be no change wrought in the 
life of another by any other means than the suggestion of image centers to 
be realized in complete experiencing by the self-determined action of the life 
itself. 

Even by suggestion we cannot make of the life of another anything 
we will to make. We can at most only modify the life in an indirect 
and partial manner. The teacher does not deal with the life of his 
pupil as a potter with his clay, but more as a machinist with the force 
of gravity. He accepts and utilizes forces that he cannot create or 
destroy. He is powerless to do more than to direct in a general way 
the character- forming process. Into the contending multitude of 
experience centers he brings by suggestion his mite of life-value, and 
can only watch hopefully that it may not be wholly smothered in the 
surging mass. He does not begin his work with a tabula rasa of an 
absolutely unformed life -structure, to educate ab initio in the life- 
process. Hereditary bias has already determined, in large measure, 
what the life shall be, and his work as an educator is merely to modify 
as rationally as he can that which he cannot successfully oppose or 
re-create. The tendencies and habitual states which the pupil has 
inherited from his ancestors constitute already at birth a certain char- 
acter which stubbornly resists the teacher's interference. He must 
reckon with this, and content himself with improving it by gentle 
guidance. The environment of the pupil's life is also a powerful force 
to which the teacher must adapt his educational ideals and methods. 
The child's physical and social environment touches his life at a thou- 
sand points, starting myriads of experiences that are wholly beyond 
the teacher's knowledge and ability to control for educational ends. 
It is, besides, from this same environment that he is to take the educa- 
tive materials which he employs in his intentional enriching and direct- 
ing of his pupil's life. He is limited to the use of the materials at 
hand, and cannot at will import from other fields of life that which 
his ideal would indicate to be the most desirable. Hence we see again 
that the teacher's function, while noble in its conception, is in its real- 
ization narrowed to a comparatively small field. He can only guide the 
existing life by unobtrusive suggestive touch. 

There can be no educative guidance without reaction by the pupil. 
This idea is involved in the very term "educative guidance." Only 
that which has independent motion can be "guided." To guide is to 



48 SUGGESTION IN EDUCA HON 

point out the way to a moving body, to direct in a determined course; 
and that which is so piloted and directed must have motion, given to 
it by some power which can be distinguished from the directing power. 
A shuttle can be guided through the warp ; a horse may be guided 
along the highway; or a bicycle may be guided by a force clearly dis- 
tinguishable from the propelling force. A merely inert thing, in a 
state of rest, cannot be guided ; there is nothing to guide. The per- 
fectly passive object may be propelled, but it cannot while passive be 
guided. That which is guided must not only be in action, but it must 
also be possible to modify that action by the new force applied. In 
the case of the self-active mind, this modifiability must of necessity 
consist in the conscious adaptation of the mind itself to the new cir- 
cumstance. To direct the development of the life of another person 
is to determine an internal state by external touch ; it is to cause the 
conscious propelling force to manifest itself in a new direction. Hence 
the educative guidance is accomplished through the conscious response 
which the pupil's life makes to the suggestive touch. The teacher 
brings to the self-active and self-determined life an interesting fact; 
and the life reacts upon it by modifying its own movement so as to 
incorporate the new element. Life in all its forms progresses chiefly 
by responding to stimulation from without. In education the stimulus 
is rationally applied by another for the purpose of securing the 
response. It is the response, not the stimulus, that contributes to the 
development. To guide educationally is to secure such reactions to 
the chosen stimuli as will lead to fuller and more vigorous life. 

There can be no "suggestion" without a "reaction," that is, a fact 
becomes a suggestion only through the reaction which it stimulates. 
To suggest to another is to so touch his life with the chosen materials 
as to cause him to accept it actively as something desired in his life, 
to cause him to react upon it. It is not the food selected in the market, 
or prepared in the kitchen, that nourishes the man ; it is what he 
appropriates at the table. While good "service" has much to do with 
feeding the body, it is, after all, the appetite and digestion of the 
eater that gives the desired growth. Though this idea of active appro- 
priation is implicit in all educational theory, it has seldom received 
the emphasis which its importance demands, and in practice it is often 
wholly forgotten. Even in this day in which "apperception" has 
become a familiar term in our pedagogical literature, we are still far 
from recognizing its real significance in the teaching process. The 
great majority of teachers in all grades of instruction — elementary. 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 49 

secondary, and higher — act as if to teach were to dispose of certain 
educational materials by a systematic and forceful presentation to the 
pupils. The current conception, however vaguely held, appears to be 
that to know clearly the "knowledge" to be imparted and have certain 
acquaintance with devices of "method" is to be fully equipped for 
success in teaching. So qualified, the teacher needs but to present the 
knowledge according to the recognized rules of his art ; the desired 
result is sure to follow. Teaching is thus viewed solely from the side 
of the teacher, who is thought to be able to introduce into the life of a 
tractable pupil elements at will. But our law negatively implies that 
this cannot be the case ; in it the words "and reaction" were added to 
emphasize the pupil's part in the act of suggestion. In teaching the 
teacher's eye should be upon the life-movement of his pupil, watching 
for the reaction. To teach is to instruct through the normal reactions 
of the pupil. 

PEDAGOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 

There are three important pedagogical truths that may be deduced 
directly from this law of education through suggestion : first, educa- 
tion is strictly an affirmative process ; second, it is purely a personal 
matter; and, third, its goal is character, not mere "knowledge" or 
"ability." These three formal propositions are basal articles of an 
educational creed, a warp of fundamental truths into which one may 
weave his whole pedagogical theory. To accept them as "a living 
faith" is to establish rational character as a teacher, and to transform 
spasmodic action into systematic procedure. Each proposition has 
its own distinctive value and importance, which we must now briefly 
set forth. 

Education is affirmative in its aim, in its means, and in its methods. 
The teacher seeks to secure a positive result in the life of his pupil. It 
is his wish to guide the child to the realization of the possibilities of 
his humanity. "To prepare us for complete living is the function 
which education has to discharge.'" While the child would naturally 
attain to a degree of life unaided, it is possible by right guidance to 
lead him into a fuller life. The aim of education is to give more life. 
The world's greatest Teacher spoke of his work thus : "I am come 
that they might have life, and that they might have it more abun- 
dantly" (John io:io). 

The means of education are positive life-factors. It is the function 
of the teacher to stimulate the child to more vigorous and more 

I Spencer, Education, p. 31, first edition. 



5 o SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 

rationally ordered living. This he does by employing the materials 
of life itself, materials found in the child's contact with the physical 
and social environment. The accumulated results of race -experiences 
found in the social consciousness are a ready fund for the teacher's 
use. What man has lived through in constructive growth is available 
material for enhancing the growth of this "heir of all the ages." The 
various "branches of study," the differentiated sciences, are food for 
human life. Their preserved and logically organized truths are to be 
experienced anew by the pupil under the stimulative guidance of his 
teacher. Thus from the actual experiences of man, from his normal 
life-movements, are to be selected the educative materials for the 
teacher's use. He uses life to form life. 

All true educative method is affirmative. It consists essentially in 
guiding existing life, seeking to reach fulness of life by developing 
the life that already is in germ at least. Just as it is no part of the 
teacher's work to create life, so it is not at all his business to check 
life or to destroy it. To "convert" one, intellectually at least, is not 
to reverse the current of his life, but to guide it in a more rational 
flow. The teacher is to aid his pupil in living. He is to make life 
easier for him, to assist him in appropriating life-materials and in 
building his life-structure. It is not enough that the teacher shall 
point out where the materials lie and later "test" to see whether they 
have been appropriated. Such general supervision lacks an essential 
element of true teaching; it furnishes no immediate aid to the builder. 
There is an unreasonable opposition among teachers, in their theoreti- 
cal utterances at least, to "aiding pupils in their work," evidently 
born of a fear that "the teacher may do the pupil's work for him." 
There is underneath this the absurd assumption that the teacher may 
experience for his pupil and present to him in some form the results. 
This is manifestly false from any rational psychological conception of 
the cognitive process. All the "results" of life that anyone can have 
are simply what he himself has lived through. It is the teacher'' s sole 
function to aid the pupil in living ; that is all that he can do. This 
aiding is always in the last analysis positive direction of the life-forces 
through affirmative suggestion. The true teacher gives freely to the 
life, struggling for self-realization, the ideals and the material for a 
noble structure and sympathetically aids the architect. 

Education is purely a personal matter. It is the influence of one 
person upon another with a view to improving his life. The teacher 
acknowledges his pupil's personality ; that is, he treats him as a peer 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 5 1 

in the realm of self-determined living. His attitude toward him is 
that toward a subject to be acknowledged and reckoned with, not 
toward a thing to be manipulated ; consequently his work is that of 
sympathetic co-operation, not of external control. 

Pedagogy is essentially an ethical science, dealing with right conduct 
of the teacher in his relation to his pupil. It is normative, treating of 
how the teacher as such ought to act toward his pupil in order to secure 
for him the most complete life. The teacher, with a high ideal of what 
his pupil's life ought to be and a clear conception of the possibility of 
guiding that life toward such ideal end, seeks ethically to order his 
own life for educational purposes. The fundamental question is one 
of ideal conduct by the teacher with specific reference to its influence on 
his pupil. It is with the rightness or wrongness of the teacher's life as 
a teacher that the norms of educational science have to do. Also the 
pupil's conduct as a pupil must be ethically right. The two parties 
are to live right with each other under the peculiar relations of teacher 
and taught, each recognizing the personality of the other and accom- 
modating his own life to it. Pedagogy is a "practical science" in the 
sense which Mackenzie^ gives to that term: "A science, it is said, 
teaches us to know, and an art to do; but a practical science teaches us 
to know how to doy Pedagogy is the practical science of the teacher's 
conduct as a teacher. 

Teaching is necessarily individual in its character. The teacher 
cannot teach a "class " en masse; the class as such has no personal life 
to guide. While it must be admitted that the best teaching is done 
with pupils associated in classes, the true teacher does not on that 
account overlook the characteristic feature of his own function, namely, 
to guide the life of the individual pupil to its highest realization ; he 
simply individualizes his teaching ; that is, he guides individual life in 
the social class relation. In all teaching there are but two parties 
immediately concerned ; a teacher and a pupil. The social atmosphere 
of the class and the educative material employed are alike incidents of 
the work of the guiding of one life by the sympathetic participation of 
another. 

The teacher is ipso facto a fellow-student. He guides his pupil in 
living by living himself. He cannot direct his pupil's experience 
except through his own immediate experience. It is his life-current 
that touches the life-current of his pupil, flowing into it and modifying 
it by its very vital force itself. He " lives with his pupil," participating 

'^Manual of Ethics, p. ii. 



5 2 SUGGESTION IN EDUCA TION 

in his life and contributing to it from his own fuller life. The pupil 
returns life for life, entering in a very important way into the daily 
experiences of his teacher, so that it may be truly said that not only 
does the teacher live on an ever-widening life in the lives of his pupils, 
but also the pupils live in the life of the teacher. The contact of the 
two lives in the schoolroom is characterized by a reciprocal interaction 
that should contribute to the bettering of both lives. The teacher as 
the stronger force, however, may intentionally determine the general 
character of the resultant — not only the character of his influence upon 
his pupil, but also indirectly the influence of his pupil upon himself. 
He may so order his own experiences and so control his pupil's experi- 
ences as to enrich and strengthen both lives ; but he cannot direct his 
pupil's life educationally without participating in that life. Jle cannot 
show another how to live without living himself. 

Not mere " knowledge" or " ability," but character is the final goal 
of all true educational effort. Education has a definite unified aim, 
which is the same for all children. If the aim were knowledge as such, 
it would be diversified ; for there are many knowledges, many forms of 
knowing arising in the various circumstances of human life. One 
would seek one knowledge as essential for a mercantile life ; another, 
for a military life ; another, for a professional life ; and so on, each 
avocation demanding its peculiar " knowledge," and hence giving a 
separate educational aim. Similarly, if the aim were " ability," grant- 
ing that it can be distinguished from knowledge, there would still be 
as many separate aims as there are abilities to do particular works, 
each skill furnishing for its craftsman a definite educational aim. In 
the naive view this would seem to be the natural and desirable function 
of education ; each man should be prepared by special development 
for the particular part which he is to perform in the social body. In 
this way not only the best social service would be secured, but also 
the greatest enjoyment of life for the individual. But this is only a 
superficial view of the matter ; education is essentially one in its aim. 
It may be directed to a definitely conceived common end for all men, 
and yet be applicable to all forms of human activity, and even to all 
shades of individual personality. In fact, it is only such a unified aim 
that can give to all education serious purpose and make the teacher's 
work most fruitful in his pupil's life. It is the high ideal that lifts the 
imperfect and commonplace into perfect realization. 

Laurie has said that: "The aim of education is always an ideal 
aim, for it contemplates the completion of a man — the realization in 



SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 53 

each man of what each has in him to become." Herbart defined such 
an aim more definitely as " the development of moral character." 
"Good character" in the Herbartian sense may be defined as such an 
integrity of life as enables the person wisely to direct all his experiences 
for his own good and the blessing of his fellow-man — a life fitted for 
" every good word and work." With such an aim the teacher would 
endeavor, not only to develop each pupil in accordance with his life- 
needs and capacities, but — what is far higher — would strive to secure 
in him a realization of true manhood. '■'^ Let him first be a man" should 
be the watchword of the teacher. The aim of education is thus organic, 
not acquisitive ; it seeks to help one to be, not to have. Its end is not 
only integrity, but fulness of life — not only a well-organized and 
definitely centered life, but " a many-sided life." Such an education 
produces what President Thwing has characterized as "not narrow 
specialists, but broad men sharpened to a point." 

The immediate aim of education is present character for present 
life. It seeks to actualize the potentialities of the present stage of life 
as a means of realizing the whole possibilities of the life. Complete 
living in the whole life is to be attained to by daily approximations in 
the actual present of that life. By guiding suggestively the growth of 
the present the perfect stature of the whole is secured. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Explanatory Note. — In selecting from the mass of "references" accumulated 
during the preparatory reading for this thesis such bibliography as will be helpful to 
another who cares to investigate the subject, it has not been the aim to restrict the 
list rigorously to books and articles that support the position taken by the writer. 
The publications in the first division show the current views of the function of sugges- 
tion in the development of human life, though by no means all of those enumerated 
definitely treat of normal suggestion. The presence of so many titles concerning 
suggestion in abnormal life shows how little the real field of the thesis has been 
worked. The conception of affirmative guidance in education characterizes the 
writings of the second division, though in general they contain little explicit reference 
to suggestion as the means of such guidance. The list could be much extended, but 
the books and articles named are fairly typical. In the third list are cited the few 
sources in which there is some definite statement regarding education through sug- 
gestion. There are doubtless more, but only these were accessible to the writer. 
The order of the titles has no significance. 

SUGGESTION IN NORMAL AND ABNORMAL LIFE, 

^xdA?,, Psychology of Suggestion. Appleton, 1898. 

Bernheim, Suggestive Therapeutics, Herter's translation. Putnam, 1889. 

Schmidkunz, Psychologie der Suggestion. Stuttgart, 1891. 

Waldstein, Sub-Conscious Self. Scribner. 

Binet and F^re, Animal Magnetism. Appleton, 1892. 

M.o\\, Hypnotism. London: 80011,1899. 

Tarde, Les lois de F imitation. Paris, 1890. 

Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology. Holt, 1891. 

]a.xne.s,, Principles of Psychology. Holt, 1890. 

Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory. Scribner, 1894. 

Titchener, A Primer of Psychology. Macmillan, 1898. 

Yo\i\\\€t, La psychologie des idees-forces. Paris, 1893. 

'QQntdXkt, Hypnotisfnus und Suggestion. Leipzig, 1894. 

Ca.rY)en.\.QX, Principles of Mental Physiology, ioMxth. edition, Appleton, 1876. 

Binet, Alterations of Personality, Baldwin's translation. Appleton, 1896. 

Kiilpe, Outlines of Psychology, Titchener's translation. Macmillan, 1893. 

SiouX., Analytic Psychology. London: Sonnenschein, 1896. 

Wundt, Gricndriss der Psychologie. Leipzig, 1896. 

Royce, Studies of Good and Evil. Appleton, 1898. 

Lehmann, Die Hypnose und die damit verwandten norm,alen Zustdnde. Leip- 
zig, 1890. 

T\ik.&, Sleep-Walking and Hypnotism. London, 1884. 

Hart, Hypnotism, Mesmerism, and the New Witchcraft. London, 1893. 

Binet, On Double Consciousness. Open Court Pub. Co., 1894. 

De Manac^ine, Sleep ; its Physiology, Pathology, Hygiene, and Psychology . 
Scribner, 1897. 

Janet, L'automatisme psycho logigue. Paris, 1893. 

SioW, Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Volkerpsychologie. Leipzig, 1894. 

Preyer, The Mind of the Child {z vols.). Appleton, 1888-89. 

54 



SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 5 5 

Preyer, Mental Development of the Child. Appleton, 1893. 

Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and in the Race. Macmillan, 
1894. 

Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development. Mac- 
millan, 1897. 

Hudson, The Law of Psychic Phenomena. McClurg, 1893. 



Newbold, "Suggestion in Therapeutics." Dental Cosmos, February, 1894. 

Hudson, " Suggestion as a Factor in Human Life." Medico-Legal fournal, 
December, i8g6. 

Barrows, "Suggestion without Hypnotism." Proceedings of the Society for 
Psychical Research, Vol. XII, London, 1897. 

Sidis, "A Study of Mental Epidemics." Century, October, 1896. 

Binet and Henri, " De la suggestibility naturelle chez les enfants." Revue 
philosophique. Vol. XXXVIII, Paris, 1894. 

Newbold, " Normal and Heightened Suggestibility, etc." Popular Science 
Monthly, December, 1895 ; January, 1896; March, 1896; April, 1896; 
June, 1896 ; July, 1896; and other articles by the same writer. 

Mason, " Educational Uses of Hypnotism." North American Review, Octo- 
ber, 1896. 

Baldwin, "Imitation : A Chapter in the Natural History of Consciousness," 
Mind, January, 1894. 

Royce, "Preliminary Report on Imitation." Psychological Review , May, 1895. 

Royce, "The Imitative Functions and Their Place in Human Nature." 
Century, May, 1894. 

Baldwin, "A Further Word on Imitation." Century, December, 1894. 

Ross, "Social Control — Suggestion." Am,erican fournal of Sociology, Sep- 
tember, 1896. 

Carus, "Suggestion and Suggestibility." Open Court, January 9, 1900. 

Fry, "Imitation as a Factor in Human Progress." LitteWs Living Age, June 
22, 1889. 

Small, " The Suggestibility of Children." Pedagogic Seminary, Vol. IV, 
1896-97. 

Fillebrown, " Hypnotic Suggestion as an Obtudent and Sedative ; " paper with 
discussion in World's Columbian Dental Congress. Dental Cosmos, Sep- 
tember, 1893. 

EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 

'^z.xn?,, Psychologic Foundations of Education. Appleton, 1898. 
SY>Qnctr, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. Appleton, 1861. 
Dewey, The School and Society. University of Chicago Press, 1899. 
Hopkins, The Spirit of the New Education. Lee & Shepard, 1892. 
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Quick's edition. London, 

1880-84. 
Pestalozzi, Leonard and Gertrude, Channing's translation. Heath, 1888. 
Froebel, The Education ^/Afa«, Hailmann's translation. Appleton, 1887. 
Parker, Talks on Pedagogics. Kellogg, 1 894. 
Bryant, Short Studies in Character. London. 
Bryant, The Teaching of Morality. London, 1897. 
Willmann, Didactik als Bildungslehre nach ihren Beziehungen zur Social- 

forschung und ztir Geschichte der Bildung. Braunschweig, 1 895 . 
Tompkins, The Philosophy of Teaching. Ginn, 1894. 
Hughes, Froebers Educational Laws. Appleton, 1897. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




56 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 021 762 792 8 I 



Spalding, Thoughts and Theories of Life and Education. McClurg, 1897. 

Spalding, Things of the Mind. McClurg, 1894. 

Spalding, Education and the Higher Life. McClurg, 1890. 

1^2Siyi&, Educational Aims and Educational Values. Macmillan, 1899. 

Vincent, The Social Mind and Education. Macmillan, 1897. 

Hailmann, "The Place and Development of Purpose in Education." Pro- 
ceedings ofN. E. A., 1889. 

Wiggin, Children's Rights ; A Book of Nursery Logic. Houghton, Mifflin 
& Co., 1892. 

Harrison, A Study of Child- Nature from the Kindergarten Standpoint. Chi- 
cago Kindergarten College, 1895. 

Abbott, Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young. 
Harper, 1871, 

Devfey, My Pedagogical Creed. Kellogg, 1897. 

Small, Demands of Sociology upon Pedagogy. Bound with the lastnamed 

McMurry, The Elements of General Method. Public-School Publishing Co., 
1893. 

Wood, Studies in the Thought World ; or Practical Mind Art. Lee & 
Shepard, 1896. 

Tompkins, "The Implications and Applications of the Principle of Self- 
Activity in Education." Proceedings of N. E. A., 1899. 

Fouill6e, Education from a National Standpoint, Greenstreet's translation. 
Appleton, 1892. 

YioVoxoo^i, School Management. Barnes, 1872. 

James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life's 
Ideals. Holt, 1899. 

Rosenkranz, The Philosophy of Education, Brackett's translation. Appleton, 
1887. 

Laurie, Lectures on Language and Linguistic Method in the School (Lecture 
I). Edinburgh, 1890. 

Butler, The Meaning of Education. Macmillan, 1898. 



Dewey, "Ethical Principles Underlying Education." Third Yearbook of the 

National Herbart Society, 1 897. 
Briggs, "The Transition from School to College." Atlantic, March, 1900. 
Thayer, "Judicious Aid to Pupils," paper read before the Harvard Teachers' 

Association. Educational Review, May, 1900. 
Howerth, "The Social End of Education." Fifth Yearbook of the National 

Herbart Society, 1899. 

EDUCATION THROUGH SUGGESTION. 

Guyau, Education ethdridite. Paris, 1892. There is also a good English 

translation of this valuable book by Greenstreet, Scribner. 
Halleck, The Education of the CentralNervous System. Macmillan, 1 896. 
Thomas, La suggestion ; son role dans l' Education. Paris, 1895. 
Wendt, "Suggestion, padagogische." Rein's Encyklopddisches Handbuch der 

Pddagogik, Vol. VI, 1899. 
Huntington, Unconscious Tuition. Kellogg, 1888. 
Queyrat, Les caracteres et P 'education morale. Paris, 1896. 
Blow, Symbolic Education ; A Commentary on FroebeVs "Mother Play." 

Appleton, 1894. 
Harris and others. Psychological Tendencies — The Study of Imitation. 

Report of National Commissioner of Education for 1896-97. 



